Clinical Research Directory

Bladder Directed vs. Pelvic Floor Therapy in IC/BPS

Women with interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS) have debilitating urinary frequency and urgency, and chronic pelvic or bladder pain perceived to be related to the bladder. Although many clinicians think that IC/BPS symptoms result from a bladder problem, tight pelvic floor muscles can cause similar symptoms and might be responsible for ICBPS symptoms instead of the bladder. Inadequate assessment of the problem leads to delays in treatment and often years of suffering. This clinical trial will test a bladder directed therapy (bladder instillations) compared to a course of pelvic floor physical therapy (PFPT) to assess the role of the pelvic floor as a major contributor to pelvic pain and voiding dysfunction in adult women with non-ulcerative IC/BPS. Early assessment of the pelvic floor muscles in patients with IC/BPS symptoms may prevent common delays in proper diagnosis and allow for early, more effective treatment.

Pain Type and Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain Syndrome Treatment

Interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS) is a severe pain condition affecting 3-8 million people in the United States lacking treatments that work. Emotional suffering is common in IC/BPS and known to make physical symptoms worse, and studies show patient sub-groups respond differently to treatment. Individuals with IC/BPS have distinct subgroups, or "phenotypes," largely characterized by the distribution of pain throughout the body. Supported by our preliminary evidence, the overall goal of this project is to assess how IC/BPS phenotype may affect response to two different therapies often given without regard to patient phenotype, pelvic floor physical therapy (PT) and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for IC/BPS.

The Role of Preoperative Immunonutrition on Morbidity and Immune Response After Cystectomy (INCyst Trial)

The goal of this clinical trial research study is to evaluate the impact of preoperative oral immunonutrition (IN) on post-operative complications in patients undergoing a cystectomy. As a secondary focus, this study will aim to develop a signature that would identify patients that would benefit the most from IN. This is a multicentric (Swiss: N=3), prospective, controlled, pragmatic, parallel-group comparative study with block randomization stratified by centers.

Assessing Symptom and Mood Dynamics in Pain Using the Smartphone Application SOMA

This study relies on the use of a smartphone application (SOMA) that the investigators developed for tracking daily mood, pain, and activity status in acute pain, chronic pain, and healthy controls over four months.The primary goal of the study is to use fluctuations in daily self-reported symptoms to identify computational predictors of acute-chronic pain transition, pain recovery, and/or chronic pain maintenance or flareups. The general study will include anyone with current acute or chronic pain, while a smaller sub-study will use a subset of patients from the chronic pain group who have been diagnosed with chronic low back pain, failed back surgery syndrome, or fibromyalgia. These sub-study participants will first take part in one in-person EEG testing session while completing simple interoception and reinforcement learning tasks and then begin daily use of the SOMA app. Electrophysiologic and behavioral data from the EEG testing session will be used to determine predictors of treatment response in the sub-study.

Amniotic Membrane Therapy for Interstitial Cystitis/Painful Bladder Syndrome

Interstitial cystitis/painful bladder syndrome (IC/PBS) is a clinical syndrome in which patients report symptoms of bladder and/or pelvic pain with pressure and/ or discomfort associated with urinary frequency and urgency. The primary objective of this study is to determine the efficacy of amniotic membrane therapy in patients with interstitial cystitis/painful bladder syndrome (IC/PBS) as defined by clinically-significant improvement in validated symptom questionnaires.