Experimental Design

Summary
Patients experiencing post-polio pain syndrome were recruited. Half of the patients were treated with an active magnetic device and half were treated with an inactive device. All patients rated their pain before and after application of the device. To simplify the presentaton, only the rating after the treatment will be analyzed here. In the raw data, this rating is referred to as "Score_2." The treatment condition is indicated by the variable "Active." Subjects receiving treatment with the active magnet have a "1" on this variable; subjects treated with the inactive placebo have a "2."

Details
The experimenters recruited 50 patients who not only had post-polio syndrome but also reported muscular or arthritic pain. These patients had significant pain for at least 4 weeks and had not taken any pain killers or anti-inflamatories for at least 3 hours before the study. The subjects all had a trigger point or painful region and had a body weight of less than 140% of the predicted weight for their age and height, and had a trigger point or circumscribed painful area.

 

The magnets and placebos (described under Materials.) were supplied in equal numbers from Bioflex. Each magnet or placebo was placed in number coded envelopes and delivered according to its shape. The code for placebos and magnets was not broken until the end of the study.

One site of reported pain was evaluated and a trigger point for this pain was found by palpitation. The patient was asked to subjectively grade pain at the trigger point under palpitation on a scale from 0 to 10 (0 is the least pain, increasing to 10).

Following the initial pain assessment, an envelope containing a device was randomly selected from the box containing active and inactive devices. This device was applied to the pain area for 45 minutes and then removed. The patient then evaluated his or her pain again at the region or trigger point. This second pain rating is the score analyzed here.

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