SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Pain Res.
Sec. Neuromodulatory Interventions
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpain.2025.1606672
This article is part of the Research TopicNon-invasive Therapy for Pain ReliefView all articles
Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound of the Spine in the Treatment of Chronic Pain and Movement Disorder: A Scoping Review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, United States
- 2Department of Neurosurgery, Carle Foundation Hospital, Urbana, Illinois, United States
- 3University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, United States
- 4Department of Biomedical and Translation Sciences,Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States
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Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Stimulation (LIFU) is a noninvasive and nondestructive neuromodulatory method with growing evidence for the safe and effective treatment of chronic pain. However, the effect of LIFU applied to the spine region, including the spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia, is not well understood. In this work, we review current advances in LIFU of the spine region for the treatment of chronic neuropathic pain and movement disorders to explore potential clinical applications and indicate a direction for future study. To assess the current state of LIFU application to pain modulation over the spinal cord region, a systematic search was performed according to PRISMA guidelines using PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and citation matching through December 17, 2024. Inclusion criteria were English language, non-tissue-damaging ultrasound neuromodulation, intervention over the spinal cord region, and relation to neuropathic pain. Exclusion criteria were existing review papers, extracorporeal shockwave therapy, tissue-destructive ultrasound treatments, non-focused ultrasound, and in vitro experiments. Preliminarily, title and abstract screening identified 15 studies, all using animal models. While results varied with different target sites and ultrasound parameters, LIFU was found to reduce allodynic response and suppress movement disorders such as spasticity and tremor. There are limited animal studies and no completed human clinical trials that analyze the effect of LIFU on spinal neural tissue. Further, there has not been a study that aims to optimize ultrasound parameters in the spine region or a thorough investigation correlating targets in the spinal regions to the desired outcome. We reviewed the current understanding of LIFU of the spine region for treating chronic pain, spasticity, and tremors to identify current advances and gaps in the literature. Our review highlights the need for further study in the efficacy and safety of LIFU applied to the spinal region of animals and humans, given the wide variation in sonication parameters, inconsistent treatment effects, and unexplored mechanisms of action.
Keywords: focused ultrasound (FUS), Low intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU), Chronic neuropathic pain, Neuromodulation, Noninvasive pain treatment, Movement Disorders, Spinal Cord, Dorsal root ganglia (DRG)
Received: 06 Apr 2025; Accepted: 23 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Seol, Hong, Kelhofer, Pappu and Oelze. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kyung Seol, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, United States
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