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Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation in Back Pain- Pilot Sudy

CompletedNot applicableNCT03243084
View the official record on ClinicalTrials.gov

Recruiting status changes often. Contact the study team listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, and talk to your doctor before joining a study.

This study has no listed site in Canada in this snapshot. It is included as part of the worldwide chronic pain corpus.

Brief summary (from the registry)

Chronic pain is a severe disabling problem within society, affecting 25-30% of the United States population.. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) has the potential to provide a treatment option that is safe, scientifically-supported, low-cost, and easy-to-administer method to effectively reduce symptoms in patients suffering from chronic pain. The purpose of this study is to test the feasibility of using tACS to treat patients with chronic pain, and to collect pilot efficacy as well as EEG and EKG biomarker data for optimizing the design of subsequent large-scale studies. The treatment rationale is to renormalize the presumed pathological structure of alpha oscillations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of patients with chronic pain.

Study details

Official title
Effect of Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation in Chronic Low Back Pain: A Pilot Study
Interventions
  • Device: XCSITE100 Stimulator Sham
  • Device: XCSITE100 Stimulator tACS
Sponsor
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Collaborators
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Start date
2017-09-07
Primary completion
2017-12-31
Sex
All
Age range
from 18 Years to 65 Years
Results posted
Yes, on ClinicalTrials.gov
Countries
United States
Total sites listed
1

Eligibility criteria

Show eligibility criteria (verbatim from the registry)
Inclusion Criteria: * Male or female, aged 18-65 * Diagnosed with nonspecific chronic low back pain by clinician * BMI is less than 30 * Suffered from chronic pain for \> 6 months * Self-report pain measures \>4 * Meets criteria for low depression and suicide risk as defined by the Hamilton-Depression Rating Scale * Capacity to understand all relevant risks and potential benefits of the study (informed consent) * Not currently taking opioids, benzodiazepines, and anticonvulsant medications Exclusion Criteria: * Radicular Pain * Traumatic brain injury, Any brain devices/implants, including cochlear implants and aneurysm clips * History of major neurological or psychiatric illness, including epilepsy * (For females) Pregnancy or breast feeding * Diagnosis of eating disorder (current or within the past 6 months), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (lifetime), or Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (currently under treatment)

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov (US National Library of Medicine), snapshot October 2026. Check the registry for current recruiting status. Record: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03243084