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Completed Not applicable Interventional Accepts healthy volunteers Results available

Management of Chronic Pain and PTSD in Gulf War Veterans With tDCS+Prolonged Exposure

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT04236284

Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT04236284. 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.

ClinicalTrials.gov public records Last synced Sep 4, 2026, 5:09 AM EDT

Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.

Brief summary

Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.

Gulf War Veterans (a DoD/VA defined service era corresponding to the first Gulf War under operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield 1990-1991), especially those who present with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), are particularly likely to experience chronic pain. Veterans with co-morbid chronic pain and PTSD utilize healthcare services at a higher rate than those with pain or PTSD alone. Unfortunately, there are no integrated treatments for Pain and PTSD. Moreover, non-pharmacological treatments for pain such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy are useful in only about 50% of cases. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may be an effective treatment for pain, and has been recently used to ameliorate PTSD symptoms. Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE) is highly effective in treating PTSD symptoms. Therefore, we propose to (a) integrate \& (b) gather feasibility data for home-based tDCS + PE for Pain and PTSD with 15 Gulf War Veterans. The Overall Aim of the present proposal is to integrate, refine and investigate the feasibility (e.g., pilot testing, recruitment, attrition, assessment) of tDCS for treating chronic pain with a best practices evidence-based treatment for PTSD (i.e., Prolonged Exposure: PE) in 15 Gulf War veterans, a group for which both pain (fibromyalgia) and PTSD are particularly problematic.

Study identification

NCT ID
NCT04236284
Recruitment status
Completed
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Not applicable
Enrollment
21 participants

Conditions and interventions

Interventions

Device · Behavioral

Eligibility (public fields only)

Age range
18 Years and older
Sex
All
Healthy volunteers
Accepts healthy volunteers

This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.

Study timeline

Start date
Jan 14, 2020
Primary completion
Nov 22, 2021
Completion
Nov 22, 2021
Last update posted
Feb 2, 2023

2020 – 2021

United States locations

U.S. sites
1
U.S. states
1
U.S. cities
1
Facility City State ZIP Site status
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Houston Texas 77030

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 NCT04236284, 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 Feb 2, 2023 · Synced Sep 4, 2026

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Open the official record

The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT04236284 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.

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