Improving cancer pain with electrical stimulation

Study launched at the University Medical Center Göttingen.

Researchers at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), Germany, have developed a brain stimulation treatment for home use for cancer patients with chronic pain as part of the international cooperation project “PAINLESS”. The aim of the research project is to improve palliative care for cancer patients in their familiar home environment. The study to test this new therapy started at the UMG in March 2024. The project has been funded by the EU with six million euros for a period of five years.

According to the “Global Atlas of Palliative Care” of the World Health Organization (WHO), 37.4 percent of deaths are associated with pain symptoms. For this reason, the treatment of acute and chronic pain, regardless of its cause, should be one of the top priorities in palliative care.

Scientists led by Professor Dr. Andrea Antal, head of the “Noninvasive Brain Stimulation Lab” in the Department of Neurology at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) in Germany, have developed a new brain stimulation treatment for home use for cancer patients with chronic pain as part of an international joint project. In this procedure, also known as low intensity transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), a weak current is passed through the scalp and skull (transcranially) and influences the excitability of nerve cells and networks in the brain. A so-called brain stimulator is used, which can be applied to the head wirelessly and without surgical intervention (non-invasive) and transmits the electrical currents specifically to the corresponding areas of the brain. The patient study to test this new method for home use, started in Germany in March 2024. It is being conducted under the direction of Prof. Antal at the UMG. The study has been running in Spain since the end of 2022 and in Switzerland since the beginning of 2024. Israel and Romania will follow. The aim of the research project is to improve palliative care for cancer patients in their familiar home environment.

The five-year project “PAINLESS” (“Pain relief in palliative care of cancer using home-based neuromodulation and predictive biomarkers”) is coordinated by Prof. Dr. Maria Teresa Carrillo-de-la-Peña, University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and has been funded by the EU with six million euros since 2022.

“We want to use transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) to stimulate the areas of the patient’s brain that are responsible for the sensation of pain and thereby eliminate the pain or reduce it to a minimum,” says Professor Antal. “We have years of clinical experience with other types of pain such as fibromyalgia, where chronic pain occurs in several parts of the body, and migraine, which is characterized by strong headache attacks. In this study, we also want to look for so-called “biomarkers”, i.e. indications of pain. To this end, we are using electroencephalography (EEG) to check whether, for example, abnormal electrical oscillations occur in the brain, which will enable us to distinguish patients without pain from those with pain. The results of the studies are stored centrally in a database and then analyzed. We would also like to investigate whether we can alleviate the pain of cancer patients with our tES approach,” says Professor Antal.

Together with the company NeuroConn GmbH from Ilmenau, the study is examining the extent to which home stimulation can be implemented for cancer patients so that healthcare can be guaranteed for the entire population, regardless of where they live. The company has many years of experience, including in the development of non-invasive brain stimulators for clinical use, but also for home use.

A total of 19 partners from eight EU countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal, Romania and Spain) as well as Israel and Switzerland are involved in the project.

Wissenschaftliche Ansprechpartner:

University Medical Center Göttingen, University of Göttingen
Department of Neurology
Professor Dr. Andrea Antal
Robert-Koch-Str. 40, 37075 Göttingen
Phone +49 551 / 39-8461
andrea.antal@med.uni-goettingen.de

Weitere Informationen:

https://palliativeprojects.eu/painless/ – Further information on the study
http://neurologie.umg.eu/forschung/arbeitsgruppen/noninvasive-brain-stimulation-… – Research group„Noninvasive Brain Stimulation Lab“ at UMG

https://www.umg.eu/news-detail/news-detail/detail/news/krebsschmerz-mittels-elektrostimulation-verbessern-studie-an-der-universitaetsmedizin-goettingen-ges/