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Quantitative Sensory Testing to Study Pain Perception in Autism

ConditionsAutism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)Pain Perception
Trial statusRecruiting
Trial phaseNot listed
Trial typeObservational
Biological sexAll
Age5-17
SponsorIRCCS Eugenio Medea

About this trial

This study aims at assess sensory perception, and pain perception, in neurodivergent children and adolescent in the autism spectrum. To achieve this goal, the quantitive sensory testing (QST), a controlled and replicable protocol, will be used, to assess perception in different sensory modalities: heat sensations, mechanical detection threshold and pain threshold. As secondary aim, the cortical processing of thermal painful stimuli will be collected through electroencephalography (EEG) in order to investigate if there are differences in the cortical processing of painful stimuli between clinical sample and control sample, and if it could be associated with differences in the subjective experience between the two groups. Finally, it will be explored the association between such differences, and indexes of psychopathology and dispositional measures.

Eligibility criteria

This trial accepts healthy volunteers

Qualifiers

Children and adolescent

age between 5 and 17 years old

Autism diagnosis according to DSM-V criteria

healthy children and adolescent (without neurological, and psychiatric, diagnoses)

Disqualifiers

peripheral neuropaties;

psychiatric diagnosis as psychosis,

Tourette Syndrome,

neurological diagnoses as epilepsy,

Trial population

Children and adolescent between 5 and 17 years old

Trial design

Design model

Case-control

Time perspective

Prospective

Treatments tested in this trial

  • Quantitative Sensory testing (QST)

    Other intervention

    The QST protocol (Rolke et al., 2006; Blankenburg et al., 2010), implies the administration of 7 short sensory test in order to measure up to 13 parameters, which can be grouped as follows: thermal detection thresholds for the perception of cold, warm and paradoxical heat sensations, thermal pain thresholds for cold and hot stimuli, mechanical detection thresholds for touch and vibration, mechanical pain thresholds and sensitivity for pinprick and blunt pressure, vibration detection threshold and pressure pain threshold.

  • EEG

    Other intervention

    EEG recording at rest and while receiving heat stimuli to study cortical processing of salient thermal stimuli. Up to 30 painful thermal stimuli, will be delivered to the patients' hand dorsum in order to register contact heat evoked potentials (CHEPs).

Treatment groups

50 Participants
are divided into 2 treatment groups
Group A: ASD Group2 interventions
Group B: Control Group2 interventions

Trial outcomes

Primary outcomes

1

EEG responses in the time domain

ERPs amplitude (μV)

Time frame
from the enrollment to the end of EEG recordin (approx. 3 days)
2

Cold detection threshold

The minimum intensity value (°C) at which a cold stimulus is perceived by each participant

Time frame
from the enrollment to the end of QST administration (approx. 2 days)
3

Warm detection threshold

The minimum intensity value (°C) at which a warm stimulus is perceived by each participant

Time frame
from the enrollment to the end of QST administration (approx. 2 days)
4

Cold pain threshold

The minimum intensity value (°C) at which a cold stimulus is perceived as painful by each participant

Time frame
from the enrollment to the end of QST administration (approx. 2 days)

Secondary outcomes

Other outcomes

Sponsors and contacts

Click on the lead sponsor to view all of their trials.

IRCCS Eugenio Medea

Lead sponsor

Source ClinicalTrials.gov
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