A WSU College of Nursing associate professor is joining a team of scientists to lead a federally funded, $2.5 million study investigating the use of an online pain management program in helping patients reduce chronic pain and the amount of prescription opioids they take.

The study will be the largest of associate professor Marian Wilson’s three pain management studies. It will take place over the next five years and involve 400 non-cancer patients who are undergoing opioid therapy.

Wilson said the study focuses on an online tool, the Goalistics Chronic Pain Management Program, which has been shown in smaller studies to decrease patients’ pain and reduce opioid use.

She said the new study will expand on her previous work and allow the researchers access to the patients’ clinical records to accurately measure their opioid use. Previously, researchers only had access to self-reported data.

The previous study, a randomized, controlled trial, tested the effectiveness of the program. It is an eight-week online intervention targeting cognitive, emotional, behavioral and social pain of patients with non-cancer pain and a current opioid prescription.

According to the study, the participants were split into two groups: one that started the online treatment immediately and the other with an eight-week delay.

The researchers found that those who started immediately had greater improvements on pain self-efficacy and opioid misuse measures than the waitlist group.

Both studies concluded that patients on opioids had positive outcomes, including significant decreases in pain severity, depression, anxiety and stress when they used the program. They also found the group with immediate treatment had a stronger knowledge of chronic pain management with opioids.

“Those results before were encouraging,” Wilson said. “But we don’t know for sure.”

Wilson said opioids have historically been the only prescription for chronic pain, even when other options, such as the online tools, are available. She said many patients build up a tolerance, leading to less efficiency and pain reduction overtime, as well as other harmful side effects like respiratory depression and accidental overdoses.

However, she said she is not anti-opioid, but focused on finding alternatives.

“I am pro-patient, pro-safety,” she said. “I believe we need to have more options.”