Trial reportThe Journal of manual & manipulative therapy2023
Expectations affect pain sensitivity changes during massage.
Trial report in The Journal of manual & manipulative therapy, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mechanistic Explanations of Manual Therapy Do Not Influence Outcomes in Healthy Individuals: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Comparison of Short-Term Effects of Different Spinal Manipulations in Patients with Chronic Non-Specific Neck Pain: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Manual Therapy Effects on Nonspecific Neck Pain Are Not Mediated by Mechanisms Related to Conditioned Pain Modulation: A Randomized Clinical Trial.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPain-inducing massage produces comparable changes in pain sensitivity as a cold pressor task, suggesting shared neurophysiological mechanisms of conditioned pain modulation. Manual therapy and conditioned pain modulation are influenced by positive and negative expectations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of positive and negative expectations on pain-free and pain-inducing massage.
methods56 healthy participants were randomly assigned to receive a positive or negative expectation instructional set followed by a pain-inducing or a pain-free massage. Pressure pain threshold (PPT) was measured followed by each interval of massage. A repeated measures ANCOVA controlling for post-randomization differences in sex tested for massage x expectation set x PPT interaction effects, as well as two-way interaction effects.
resultsA significant three-way interaction effect (p = 0.04) and time x expectation interaction effect was observed for individuals receiving pain inducing massage (p = 0.02). Individuals who received the positive expectation instructional set demonstrated significantly higher PPT at minutes 3 and 4 of massage compared to individuals who received the negative expectation instructional set.
conclusionsExpectations impact pain sensitivity changes produced during massage. Clinicians planning to provide pain-inducing massage should consider the role of expectations in modulating pain sensitivity changes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.