WORCESTER, Mass. — WPI's Jean King and her colleagues will oversee a five-year study to determine whether or not people can be steered away from addictive opioids when treating pain.
"This study is about helping physicians, able to take the guesswork out of it and say for example, 'you may respond to mindfulness,'" said King, The Peterson Family dean of Arts and Sciences at WPI.
The full term is mindfulness-based stress reduction, which King describes as a meditative practice, where someone has a sense of awareness in their present situation.
What You Need To Know
- WPI is leading a five-year study, to determine whether or not people can be steered away from addictive opioids when treating pain
- The study is focused around mindfulness-based stress reduction, which is described as a meditative practice
- A recent study from the CDC shows more than a fifth of American adults are living with chronic pain
- The CDC also reports more than 80,000 opioid related deaths in 2021
The study will focus primarily on lower back pain to start, with 350 participants being watched over a six-month period.
But what classifies chronic pain?
"It's a persistent pain," King said. "So, it's pain that lasts beyond injury for a very long time. We would say at least a month, six weeks, months."
WPI will partner with researchers from across the northeast, including UMass Chan Medical School. They'll also have help from artificial intelligence.
"So what we're looking at is several data sets, different data, that has been collected in clinical trials, and looking to see if there are specific characteristics in the data that will predict that somebody is benefitting from this intervention," said King.
The work comes at an important time. A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows more than a fifth of American adults are living with chronic pain. This coincides with the more than 80,000 opioid related deaths the country saw in 2021.
Worcester's Board of Health addressed the issue of overdoses at their most recent meeting.
"We've seen overdose deaths increase," said Dr. Matilde Castiel, the city's commissioner of Health and Human Services. "Certainly, they have increased in Worcester County, and Worcester overall."
King says in order for the study to be a success, it can't just be another study thrown onto shelves. It has to be information which is actually put to use.
"Because we have clinicians who are practicing on the team, really, getting it from, 'Oh it's a great study and this is what they showed,' to using it in the clinic," said King.