Evaluating Manual Therapy in Musculoskeletal Pain: Why Certain Trial Designs May Overestimate Effectiveness—A Scoping Review

Atraumatic musculoskeletal pain, regardless of the affected body region, is a highly prevalent condition impacting over 25% of the global population and contributing significantly to the burden of disease. A common study design compares physiotherapy or exercise therapy alone to the same intervention combined with MT (A vs. A + B). This study design is inherently flawed due to its inability to isolate the effect of treatment B, the potential for interaction effects, and the lack of control for non‐specific contextual factors. The goal of this study was to compile studies using that approach and to examine the short‐, medium‐, and long‐term effects of the addition of MT to a control treatment.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  European Journal of Pain

• Publication date

  2025-11-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1002/ejp.70150PMID 41231078PMCID 12614156
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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