A recent study by Carvalho et al., titled “Home-Based Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Device Development: An Updated Protocol Used at Home in Healthy Subjects and Fibromyalgia Patients” explores the potential use of at-home tDCS for treating fibromyalgia.
The publication touches upon a common problem in neuromodulation treatment—where patients are often required to travel inconvenient distance and take valuable time out of their day to accommodate for their neuromodulation interventions. Carvalho and colleagues explore a potential solution to this problem in tDCS for fibromyalgia by testing the feasibility of a portable tDCS device with a built-in security system that only permits 20 minutes of use daily, with a minimum interval of 12 hours between uses.
In a study with 20 healthy subjects and 8 subjects with fibromyalgia, subjects were able to individually choose which time of day to receive the treatment, accommodating with the patients’ schedules. This also increases the patient adherence to the protocol and subsequently enables reproducibility of research conditions even from a remote location. Carvalho and colleagues found that with proper monitoring of patient adherence and contact impedance, results from these tDCS sessions resemble closely with results from sessions where the treatments were under direct supervision.
This study seems to further support the feasibility of implementing medically rigorous at-home tDCS treatments—justifying further exploration of these types of tDCS with larger samples in clinical trials.
For more information, click the link to the publication below:
