Specific and Shared Mechanisms Associated With Treatment for Chronic Neck Pain
CompletedNot applicableNCT05940012
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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)
It is expected that different physical therapy treatments influence outcomes in many different ways. Each treatment is assumed to have a "specific" treatment mechanism, which explains how that specific treatment works. Different treatments also have "shared" mechanisms, which are similar across many different types of interventions (e.g., exercise, cognitive treatments or manual therapy). In this study, the study team will investigate the several types of specific treatment mechanisms of a manual therapy-based approach and an exercise-based approach and the study team will compare these to see if they are different. The patient population will include individuals with chronic neck pain, which is a condition that leads to notable disability and pain. The study team will also evaluate several shared treatment mechanisms to see if these are similar across the two treatments (e.g., manual therapy versus exercise). The study team expects to find that there are some specific treatment mechanisms with each approach (manual therapy versus exercise) but also several "shared" mechanisms that are similar across the two seemingly different approaches. These will likely influence the outcomes and may help explain why clinicians see similar outcomes across both treatment groups for chronic neck pain. This study is important because no one has investigated whether the outcomes that occur with chronic neck pain are mostly influenced by specific or shared treatment mechanisms. Interestingly, in the psychological literature, shared treatment mechanisms demonstrate the strongest influence (more than specific treatment mechanisms).
Study details
- Official title
- Specific and Shared Mechanisms Associated With Physical Therapy Interventions
- Conditions
- Interventions
- Sponsor
- Duke University
- Collaborators
- Saint-Joseph University; Medical University of South Carolina
- Start date
- 2024-01-01
- Primary completion
- 2025-04-30
- Sex
- All
- Age range
- from 18 Years
- Results posted
- No results posted in this snapshot
- Countries
- United States
- Total sites listed
- 1
Eligibility criteria
Show eligibility criteria (verbatim from the registry)
Inclusion Criteria: * Individuals with chronic neck pain (chronic pain is defined using the International Association of the Study of Pain (IASP) pragmatic criteria of pain lasting for 3 months or more that cannot be attributed to another diagnosis or condition.) * 18 years of age and older * experience ongoing neck pain of ≥3 on a 10-point scale for most days of the previous 3-months. Exclusion Criteria: * Individuals with cervical pain and suspected radicular symptoms * a history of neck surgery within 1 year * current or suspected red flags * unable to speak or write in English.
Source: ClinicalTrials.gov (US National Library of Medicine), snapshot October 2026. Check the registry for current recruiting status. Record: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05940012