Active clinical trials for "Medically Unexplained Symptoms"

The annual societal cost of medically unexplained symptoms in Sweden is approximately 40 billion SEK, i.e., similar to the annual cost of cancer. Prevalent chronic diseases like asthma and diabetes are also commonly associated with somatic symptoms that lead to significant distress and pervasive behavioral changes that result in functional impairment and place added strain on the health care system. Exposure-based treatment, where the patient willingly engages with stimuli that give rise to unwanted physical sensations or distress, has shown promise in reducing somatic symptom load and increasing quality of life in several conditions where patients commonly report substantial distress related to somatic symptoms, such as in asthma, musculoskeletal pain, and functional gastrointestinal syndromes. In routine care, however, access to such exposure-based treatment is limited. One reason for this is probably that there exists no flexible exposure-based treatment protocol that can be easily tailored to suit a wide spectrum of patient groups who suffer from distress related to recurrent somatic symptoms. In a recent single group feasibility trial (N=33) at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, the investigators found that such a tailored exposure-based treatment delivered in an online text-based format can be acceptable, with high treatment adherence, adequate treatment satisfaction, large and lasting within-group improvement, and no serious adverse events. This is a randomized controlled trial (N=160) where the investigators aim to test if the same tailored internet-delivered exposure-based treatment is more efficacious than a standardized education control for adult patients with clinically significant distress related to somatic symptoms in a primary care setting. Primary outcome is change in self-rated somatic symptom burden as modelled using linear mixed models fitted on weekly Patient Health Questionnaire 15 sum scores over the treatment period. Long-term efficacy is assessed up to one year after treatment and cost-effectiveness is investigated based on the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio.

The purpose of the study is to assess the tolerability and efficacy of dextromethorphan in combination with fluoxetine for symptom relief in OCD and related disorders.

This research program is aimed to develop a integrative psychotherapy (including CBT and biofeedback therapy) and to examine its efficacy on treatment of somatic symptom disorder. The study design is a randomized controlled trial with waiting list control. Scores of Patient Health Questionniare-15 and Health Anxiety Questionnaire are the primary endpoints.

This is a prospective, single-center study. This study seeks to determine the objective improvement in nasal airflow in patients after undergoing the VivAer procedure, which involves the use of a stylus to deliver controlled and targeted low energy radiofrequency heating (heating by applying high-frequency radio waves) to the nasal sidewall to gently reshape the tissues. Patients who experience refractory, or medically unexplained, nasal obstruction often have symptoms that are not alleviated or resolved by standard non-surgical treatment options. VivAer, a recently developed, FDA-approved procedure, is one of the standard surgical treatments for nasal obstruction. Unlike most of the other established surgical treatments for nasal obstruction, however, VivAer is a minimally-invasive procedure, and it is an outpatient intervention that can be performed under local anesthetic. Eligible patients who are enrolled in the study will undergo the VivAer procedure, and will return to the clinic for three in-office follow-up visits at 4, 12, and 24 weeks after the procedure.

To investigate the effects of the two following interventions on somatoform patients:1. case management model2. psychotherapy, based on cognitive-behavioral therapy and biofeedback therapy

This is a randomized double-blind sham-controlled crossover study; the interventions are high-frequency rTMS stimulation on left DLPFC and sham control. The study population is the patient with somatic symptom disorder. The primary outcomes are somatic distress and health anxiety.

This study is a randomized controlled pilot trial using a hybrid type 1 effectiveness-implementation design to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of a brief cognitive-behavioral intervention delivered by medical assistants in a primary care setting. The trial compares clinical outcomes of participants assigned to the intervention condition to those of participants assigned to a usual care condition. The clinical outcome is change on a self-report measure of health anxiety. Assessments occur at baseline, four weeks, and 12 weeks post-treatment. The study will also measure engagement with the intervention and assess feasibility and acceptability of the intervention in terms of fidelity of trained study therapists and ratings of the intervention by participants. The usual care condition consists of a referral to a mental health provider. The intervention is comprised of four sessions of individually administered cognitive-behavioral therapy addressing health anxiety. Treatment focuses on building motivation for change, psychoeducation about health anxiety, cognitive restructuring, and situational and interoceptive exposure. The study will recruit from three primary care clinics within the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health system. The study will also assess facilitators and barriers to implementation using qualitative analyses of interview responses provided by the medical assistants delivering the intervention, primary care providers, and clinic administrators at the study sites.

This is a study on Metacognitive therapy in general practice in Norway. The intervention is a small pilot study to examine whether Metacognitive therapy is feasible in an ordinary general practice. Will the physicians be capable to learn and provide the therapy method for their patients with MUPS and is is possible to implement this in an ordinary general practice routine? Both physicians and their patients will be asked to respond to a questionnaire on perceived utility of the treatment.

From a clinical perspective, we find that many patients with Post COVID condition suffer from severe and debilitating shortness of breath, while routine pulmonary investigations fail to find the cause of the problems experienced. If dyspnea is associated with palpitations, dizziness or anxiety, patients are commonly diagnosed with "dysfunctional breathing". From a psychosomatic perspective, the symptom of dysfunctional breathing can be classified as a "functional symptom" under the umbrella term of somatic symptom disorder. Therefore, Yoga interventions with special emphasis on breath-guided relaxation are a promising approach. We aim to investigate the psycho-somatic and somato-psychic pathophysiology on a morphological, psychological, functional and biological basis underlying the symptom of dysfunctional breathing. Furthermore, we plan to investigate the mechanism of Yoga intervention on the mental and somatic symptom burden of participants with Post COVID condition. Then, we aim to compare the impact of Yoga on other groups - healthy individuals, patients with chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD), as well as those with somatic symptom disorder. As a control intervention to Yoga guided breathing exercises a social contact group will be used.

This study aims at developing an online system for the remote delivery of EMDR therapy in Pakistan. Moreover, this study will compare the efficacy of online EMDR therapy with face-to-face EMDR therapy.