The Parkinson’s Pain Study

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    The Parkinson’s Pain Study

  • IRAS ID

    131521

  • Contact name

    Monty Silverdale

  • Contact email

    monty.silverdale@srft.nhs.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust

  • Research summary

    Over half of patients with Parkinson’s disease suffer from chronic pain. Despite this, there has not been much research on pain in Parkinson’s disease. The primary aim of this study is to increase our understanding of pain in Parkinson’s disease, and identify biomarkers of pain. Biomarkers are small changes in the body that can help with diagnosis, tracking the disease and explaining the disease mechanism. In this case we hope that biomarkers will explain why some patients develop pain and help direct treatment.
    Our study is called the Parkinson’s Pain study. This will run alongside two separate studies: the Proband study, and the Oxford Monument Discovery Study. Both the Proband study and the Oxford Discovery Study are already running and have been given favourable ethical approval. These are two of the world’s largest ever in-depth studies of people with Parkinson’s. Between them, they are aiming to recruit almost 4000 patients with Parkinson’s disease from many centres around the UK between 2012 and 2017. All patients in the these studies will have detailed assessments of their Parkinson’s disease symptoms, as well as having blood samples taken to identify biomarkers.
    The Proband study and the Oxford Discovery study are not investigating pain in Parkinson’s disease and therefore will not be able to find biomarkers of pain in Parkinson’s disease. However these studies were always meant to encourage people to add other studies onto it. We want to add a brief (20 minute) assessment of pain onto one of the Proband study and the Oxford Monument Discovery Study visits. We will be able to combine the information from our study with the other detailed assessments in these studies to help us understand pain in Parkinson’s disease.

  • REC name

    North West - Preston Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    13/NW/0554

  • Date of REC Opinion

    29 Aug 2013

  • REC opinion

    Favourable Opinion