The Role of Epigenetic Mechanisms in Stress Intolerance in Patients With Chronic Widespread Pain
CompletedNCT06475859
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)
Patients with chronic widespread pain (CWP) frequently experience stress intolerance - an exacerbation of symptoms in response to stress. Although it severely affects their quality of life, stress intolerance remains a mystery. Hence, unravelling the mechanisms underlying stress intolerance is crucial to understand CWP pathophysiology and to develop novel treatments. Epigenetic mechanisms hold the potential to provide an answer as they have been found to be altered in patients with CWP at baseline, and in response to stress. However, research on epigenetic mechanisms in CWP is very scarce. Hence, this study aims to address this knowledge gap by assessing stress-induced epigenetic changes in patients with CWP and healthy controls aiming to unravel whether epigenetic mechanisms can help explain stress intolerance. The regulatory role of epigenetic mechanisms will be researched in relation to the activity of enzymes affected by the epigenetic mechanisms, neurophysiological measures, and stress-induced symptom changes in patients with CWP.
Study details
- Official title
- The Role of Epigenetic Mechanisms in Stress Intolerance in Patients With Chronic Widespread Pain
- Conditions
- Interventions
- Other: Montreal Imaging Stress Test
- Other: Relaxation breathing
- Sponsor
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- Collaborators
- Research Foundation Flanders; KU Leuven
- Start date
- 2023-04-19
- Primary completion
- 2025-04-18
- Sex
- Female
- Age range
- from 18 Years to 70 Years
- Healthy volunteers
- true
- Results posted
- No results posted in this snapshot
- Countries
- Belgium
- Total sites listed
- 1
Eligibility criteria
Show eligibility criteria (verbatim from the registry)
Inclusion Criteria: * female * age between 18 and 70 years old * body mass index (BMI) below 30 * inactive lifestyle * for patients only: received the diagnosis of fibromyalgia Exclusion Criteria: * other neurological, endocrine, cardiac, or systemic syndromes * history of cancer or heart failure * women that are pregnant or within one year after pregnancy
Source: ClinicalTrials.gov (US National Library of Medicine), snapshot October 2026. Check the registry for current recruiting status. Record: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06475859