Conectar
Neck pain is highly prevalent worldwide with no reliable or approved therapies. Recently, percutaneous neuromodulation (PNM) has gained popularity as an alternative to conventional treatments for managing musculoskeletal disorders.
This study aims to assess the comparative effectiveness of PNM compared with therapeutic exercise in the management of patients with chronic non-specific neck pain (CNNP).
In this randomised, controlled, single-blind study, 100 patients with CNNP will be allocated in a 1:1 ratio into two study groups: treatment with PNM and treatment with therapeutic exercise (specific neck exercises). A total of 18 structured exercise sessions will be administered three times per week for 6 weeks. Disability, pain intensity, fear of movement, quality of life, quality of sleep, catastrophising, cervical range of motion and pressure pain threshold will be recorded at 6 weeks (immediately post-treatment) and 8 weeks after initiation (or the end of treatment).
Ethical approval was obtained from the provincial research ethics committee of Almeria (AP-0429-2023 C4-F2) in June 2024. The results of the study, including feasibility outcomes, will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at academic, clinical and healthcare conferences.
ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT06695949.
by Marta Garrigós, Mario Garrido, María José Ruiz-López, María José García-López, Jesús Veiga, Sergio Magallanes, Ramón Soriguer, Isabel Moreno-Indias, Jordi Figuerola, Josué Martínez-de la Puente
West Nile virus (WNV) is a flavivirus naturally circulating between mosquito vectors and birds, occasionally infecting horses and humans and causing epidemiologically relevant outbreaks. In Spain, the first big WNV outbreak was recorded in 2020, resulting in 77 people infected and 8 fatalities, most of them in southern Spain. Culex perexiguus was identified as the primary vector of WNV maintaining its enzootic circulation of the virus. Growing evidence highlights the role of mosquito microbiota as a key component determining the vectorial capacity of mosquitoes, largely contributing to disease epidemiology. Here, we develop, to our knowledge, the first identification of the microbiota composition of this mosquito vector under natural conditions and test for the potential relationship between mosquito microbiota composition and WNV infection. To do so, we collected mosquitoes in a natural area of southern Spain during the 2020 WNV outbreak and identified the microbiota composition of mosquitoes using a 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding approach. The microbiota of Cx. perexiguus was dominated by the phylum Proteobacteria. The most abundant families were Burkholderiaceae and Erwiniaceae, including the genera Burkholderia, Erwinia, and Pantoea. The genus Wolbachia, which use to dominate the microbiota of Cx. pipiens and negatively interact with WNV according to the literature, had a low prevalence and relative abundance in Cx. perexiguus and its abundance did not differ between WNV-positive and WNV-negative mosquito pools. The microbiota diversity and composition of Cx. perexiguus were not significantly related to the WNV infection status. These results provide the first identification of the mosquito microbiota in an endemic area of WNV circulation in Spain.
FreshRSS 