Uhlig-Reche Hannah, Hoekstra Sven, Wu Yubo, Kellogg Dean Lundt, Romo Terry, Leicht Christof A, Trbovich Michelle B
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Texas Health at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78229, USA.
South Texas Veteran's Health Care System, San Antonio, TX 78229, USA.
J Clin Med. 2025 May 20;14(10):3566. doi: 10.3390/jcm14103566.
/: Rates of depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, and chronic pain are higher in people with spinal cord injury (SCI) compared with able-bodied individuals. Passive heat therapy (PHT), which raises core body temperature, may be an accessible therapeutic intervention. The effects of PHT on mental health, sleep, and pain in persons with SCI are unknown. : We performed a time-controlled pre-post intervention pilot study in which ten veterans with chronic SCI underwent an 8-week supervised PHT intervention to raise oral temperature by 1 °C each session. Outcome measures were the 5-item Mental Health Inventory, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, and International Spinal Cord Injury Pain Extended Data Sets version 1.0. : There were no adverse events related to the intervention and nine out of ten participants completed all their intervention sessions. There was a reduction in pain intensity ( = 0.039) upon completing the intervention (from a median (IQR) of 2.0 (0.0, 3.5) to 1.0 (0.0, 4.5) on a 0-10 scale). However, there were no improvements in self-reported mental health or sleep outcomes ( > 0.339). : This pilot study suggests that supervised repeated passive heat therapy may confer benefits for chronic pain in veterans with chronic SCI. Follow-up studies with larger sample sizes and more extensive sets of chronic pain outcomes are needed to confirm these findings.
与身体健全的人相比，脊髓损伤（SCI）患者的抑郁、焦虑、睡眠障碍和慢性疼痛发生率更高。被动热疗法（PHT）可提高核心体温，可能是一种易于获得的治疗干预措施。PHT对SCI患者心理健康、睡眠和疼痛的影响尚不清楚。我们进行了一项时间控制的干预前后试点研究，10名患有慢性SCI的退伍军人接受了为期8周的PHT干预，每次干预使口腔温度升高1°C。结果测量指标为5项心理健康量表、爱泼华嗜睡量表和国际脊髓损伤疼痛扩展数据集1.0版。与干预相关的不良事件未发生，10名参与者中有9名完成了所有干预疗程。完成干预后疼痛强度有所降低（P = 0.039）（在0至10分的量表上，从中位数（IQR）2.0（0.0，3.5）降至1.0（0.0，4.5））。然而，自我报告的心理健康或睡眠结果没有改善（P>0.339）。这项试点研究表明，有监督的重复被动热疗法可能对患有慢性SCI的退伍军人的慢性疼痛有益。需要进行更大样本量和更广泛慢性疼痛结果集类的后续研究来证实这些发现。
