The effects of kinesiology taping on experimentally-induced thermal and mechanical pain in otherwise pain-free healthy humans: A randomised controlled repeated-measures laboratory study

BackgroundKinesiology taping (KT) is used to manage musculoskeletal-related pain. There is a paucity of physiological studies evaluating the effect of KT on stimulus-evoked experimental pain.ObjectiveTo investigate the effect of KT (applied to lumbar region) on cutaneous somatosensation to noxious and innocuous stimuli in humans with a non-sensitised normally functioning nociceptive system using quantitative sensory testing (QST).MethodsFifty-four participants were randomised to one of three interventions: (i) KT (ii) standard ‘rigid’ taping (ST) (iii) sham taping (ShT). QST measurements were taken at lumbar sites pre-intervention (T1), during-intervention (T2) and during-intervention (T3) in the following sequence: warm-detection-threshold (WDT), heat-pain-threshold (HTPh), heat-pain-tolerance (HPTo), mechanical-detection-threshold (MDT), mechanical-pain-threshold (MPT) and pressure-pain-threshold (PPT).ResultsMixed ANOVA revealed statistically significant interaction between Intervention and Time on MDT (p p p = .09), HPTh (p = .09), HPTo (p = .51) and PPT (p = .52) datasets. There was no significant simple main effect of Intervention on MDT at T2 (p = .68) and T3 (p = .24), and MPT at T2 (p = .79) and T3 (p = .54); post-hoc tests found KT and ST groups had higher (but non-significant) MDT and MPT than the ShT group. There was a significant simple main effect of Time on MDT and MPT for KT (p p p = .13) nor MPT (p = .08) for the ShT group.ConclusionTaping, irrespective of the elasticity, may modulate cutaneous mechanosensation. KT, ST and ShT seemed to have similar influence on cutaneous thermal and deep pressure nociception.