Dry Needling at the Thoracolumbar Junction on Measures of Sympathetic Outflow and Flexibility
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03630172. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Official title
The Effect of Dry Needling at the Thoracolumbar Junction on Measures of Sympathetic Outflow and Local and Remote Muscular Flexibility in Subjects With Low Back Pain and Decreased Hamstring Length
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Dry needling (DN) is becoming more frequently performed by physical therapists around the world to treat musculoskeletal pain. Dry needling is a form of trigger point therapy that evolved from using injections of local anesthetics. Although dry needling is becoming more commonly used, there is little agreement on how it works. Researchers have focused their efforts investigating other forms of manual therapy until very recently. To date, no studies have looked at how dry needling effects muscles distant from the area being treated. Most of the body's sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight response) is located in the thoracic spine, it may be a "silent" contributor to musculoskeletal problems in the arms and legs. The purpose of this study is to determine how dry needling the thoracolumbar junction affects pain, flexibility, and other non-invasive measures of nervous system output in people who have low back pain and tightness of their hamstring muscles. Standard dry needling treatment will be compared with a placebo. The investigators hypothesize that dry needling will have a greater sympathetic nervous system response, as measured by changes in heart rate, skin temperature and skin conductance, when compared with the placebo. The investigators also hypothesize that dry needling will have a greater positive effect on flexibility of the low back and hamstring muscles when compared to the placebo.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT03630172
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 54 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years to 70 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Sep 14, 2018
- Primary completion
- Aug 9, 2019
- Completion
- Aug 9, 2019
- Last update posted
- Aug 27, 2019
2018 – 2019
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sports and Orthopaedic Therapy Services, LLC | Kensington | Maryland | 20895 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03630172, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Aug 27, 2019 · Synced Sep 3, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT03630172 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.