Chronic Pain Study Group (CPSG) Satellite Dinner Meeting

NEURORHEUMATOLOGY WITH A SPIN: THERAPEUTIC INNOVATION WITH THE CALORIC TEST IN NOCIPLASTIC PAIN

Sunday 17th May | 6 pm onwards

Venue: TBC (near conference venue)

Dinner Registration Cost: TBC

Time: 6:00pm onwards

Registration and Enquiries: Please contact Trung directly on 042 111 7258 (or Trung.Ngo@uq.edu.au)
NB Limited seats available & registrations will close once capacity has been reached.

Presentation Summary

Our sense of balance — though under-recognised across science & medicine — has deep evolutionary, ontogenetic & integrative foundations in brain-behaviour responses that have come to light particularly since the late 20th Century. The caloric test — via the vestibulo-ocular reflex — is a simple, low-cost, low-risk, non-invasive and widely used mainstream neurodiagnostic technique for balance problems & brain death, with a long-standing record of safety since its development over a century ago. The technique is routinely performed for example in primary care clinics by GPs & nurses (for cerumen removal), audiologists, neurologists & ENT physicians.

Over recent decades its renewed transformative potential — through vestibulocortical stimulation (VCS) — is highlighted by remarkable therapeutic benefits shown in adults with often disabling refractory conditions such as phantom limb & central post-stroke pain, migraine, CRPS/allodynia and refractory fibromyalgia; other neurological disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s disease, minimally conscious state); and severe mental illness (e.g., depression, bipolar & schizophrenia spectrum disorders). This talk will present a high-level overview of the technique’s wide-ranging multimodal effects across mood, pain, cognition, attention, perception, beliefs/insight & mobility — with a practical lens towards accessible & innovative clinical care for people suffering from chronic primary pain conditions.

This body of work on VCS therapy trials in nociplastic pain is a close collaboration — now going on six years — between the presenter and A/Prof. Michael Kaplan MD in the Division of Rheumatology (NCT05004194; NCT06559839), Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, USA). They are currently conducting the world’s first sham-controlled randomised trial of VCS in fibromyalgia (as senior supervising scientist and principal investigator, respectively).

PRESENTER: Dr Trung Thành Ngô — The University of Queensland and Tess Cramond Pain & Research Centre

Trung has over 15 years of STEMM capabilities in driving fundamental discovery and clinical translation projects, along with delivering specialist research evaluation services for several large-scale strategic & funding priorities (e.g., principal investigators; medical science associations; multi-institutional national/international partnerships).

With an interdisciplinary synthesis & quality outcomes focus, he is advancing:

(I) Precision Pain Medicine R&D program to delineate genetically supported risk & protective factors, transdiagnostic subtypes/biotypes and novel therapeutic targets for chronic pain & its many comorbidities (e.g., dementia; Parkinson’s disease; psychiatric, sleep & cardiometabolic disorders); 

(II) Vestibulocortical stimulation (VCS) therapy trials in these complex conditions and its preventative health utility — i.e., improving insight & reversing maladaptive neuroplasticity/inflammation following injury/trauma (e.g., acquired brain injuries, concussion, PTSD) — with both local & U.S. clinicians across multiple medical disciplines and in other prominent pain presentations (e.g., endometriosis; functional neurological disorders; multiple sclerosis).

Trung also actively supports the Australian entrepreneurship ecosystem through Health Tech Innovation QLD — and AIMOS:  the Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-Research & Open Science — in its continuing commitment to improving research quality, integrity & culture for the meaningful benefit of our broader community. His PhD in Neuroscience was undertaken with Jack Pettigrew MBBS FRS, followed by an NHMRC Clinical Research Fellowship examining a bistable (quantum) switching biomarker of neurocognitive (dys)regulation and VCS in persistent pain, bipolar & depressive disorders.

For registrations & any enquiries, please contact Trung directly on 042 111 7258 (or Trung.Ngo@uq.edu.au)