Recruiting

TMS & Physical Exercise

Sponsor:

Université de Sherbrooke

Code:

NCT04332939

Conditions

Chronic Pain

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 60+

Healthy Volunteers: Not accepted

Interventions

transcranial direct current stimulation

Physical exercise

Study Details

Brief summary:

Physical exercises are known to reduce chronic pain in elderly individuals by activating the motor system. However, it seems that exercises are not effective for everyone. The investigators believe that elderly individuals with altered corticospinal tract will be those in whom the exercise alone are not sufficient to relieve pain. For those patients, adding an exogenous stimulation of the motor system such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) would facilitate the corticospinal tract, and consequently, would help exercises to relieve chronic pain. The investigators hypothesize that combining tDCS with the exercises will be more effective than exercises alone, but only in individuals who initially show low corticospinal projections.

Conditions

Chronic Pain

Study ID

NCT04332939

Start date

Dec 1, 2020

Status verified date

Mar, 2023

Completion date

Dec, 2024

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Oct 1, 2023

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 60+

Healthy Volunteers: Not accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

  • To have musculoskeletal chronic pain
  • Not to change medication and life habits during the study

Exclusion Criteria:

  • People physically active before the study (more then 150 min of moderate to vigorous exercise par week)
  • To have an uncontrolled cardiovascular disease
  • To have orthopedic limitation or contraindication to physical exercise
  • To have contraindication to tDCS
  • To have contraindication to TMS
  • To have contraindication to MRI

Study Design

Enrollment

32 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Treatment

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: Exercise + real tDCS

Intervention will last 8 weeks where participants will be trained at a rate of 3 workouts per week.

For the first week, participants will receive 5 daily sessions of anodal tDCS (2 mA, 20 min).

sham comparator: Exercise + Sham tDCS

Intervention will last 8 weeks where participants will be trained at a rate of 3 workouts per week.

For the first week, participants will receive 5 daily sessions of sham tDCS.

Interventions

transcranial direct current stimulation

real tDCS sessions

Physical exercise

Aerobic exercise and physical training combined with sham tDCS

Primary outcome measure

  • Changes in Pain intensity [ Time Frame: Before intervention (T1), First week of intervention (T2), Week 4 (T3), Week 8 (T4), Follow-up 1 week after intervention (T5), Follow-up 1 month after intervention (T6) ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Guillaume Léonard, PhD. pht

1 819-780-2220guillaume.leonard2@usherbrooke.ca

Marie-Philippe HArvey, M.Sc

1 819-780-2220marie.philippe.harvey@usherbrooke.ca

Locations

Research Centre on Aging

Recruiting

Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, J1H 4C4

Contacts

Guillaume Léonard, pht, PhD

1 819-780-2220guillaume.leonard2@usherbrooke.ca

Grace Village

Recruiting

Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, J1M 0C6

More Information

Sponsor

Université de Sherbrooke

Last update posted

Mar 27, 2023

Last verified

Mar, 2023

Keywords

  • transcranial direct current stimulation
  • physical exercise
  • corticospinal projections

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by Université de Sherbrooke on 2023-03-27.