Campbell Received $1.1 Million for Osteopathic Research

An anonymous philanthropic gift was recently made to Campbell University to support Dr. Tom Motyka’s research in musculoskeletal dysfunction and pain; specifically, identifying the mechanism in prolotherapy and the efficacy of OMT in increasing range of motion.

Efficacy of OMT

Thanks to the generous gift, the team purchased an Optitrack system with Theia3D software for motion capture of human subjects. The goal is testing for efficacy of OMT treatments - comparing before and after for range of motion. The first step is capturing sample data and learning the system.

“We are working with the software support folks to upload and evaluate test videos capturing us walking, running, jogging, squatting and lunging - standardized movements they use to train us to use the system properly,” explained Dr. Adam Foster, associate professor of anatomy, whose background is in biomechanics.

“Our goal is to use this system to more precisely and reliably measure movements that can be prone to inter-observer measurement error. Once they have established proficiency with the system, the first study will examine the efficacy of OMT on the diaphragm to increase the range of motion.

The team is already brainstorming future projects on the epidemiology of movement with large numbers of human subjects.

“We can characterize gait or movement patterns in large sample sizes of people that may have important clinical or behavioral implications. For example, nursing home residents or migrant farm workers, or just residents of Harnett County. That hasn’t really been done before.”

Prolotherapy inflammatory marker cellular work:

“Given the number of people who suffer from chronic pain and/ or motor dysfunction of joints, prolotherapy offers a potentially efficacious therapy to reduce pain and even stimulate healing processes while being minimally invasive and non-addictive.”

“Although prolotherapy has been reported to reduce pain and improve mobility and function of joints, it has yet to gain a lot of traction in the medical world as a recommended therapy. There simply is not sufficient research yet, but that is the really exciting component about this research project—it is unchartered territory. Anything we find out will be new and helpful in better understanding this therapy and its potential to becoming a safe and established therapy that could help thousands of patients, improving their quality of life. In particular, we are really interested in the mechanistic component of prolotherapy because no one really knows what it’s doing at the cellular or tissue level,” Dr. Amy Hinkelman, assistant professor of microbiology and immunology said. “If you look in the literature, there are just a few labs that have done work on it. This is a prime opportunity to fill in those gaps.”

“Even if we find negative data, at least that is something that we can provide to the scientific community, and say ‘it’s not this; it doesn’t do this’. So, there are lots of different things that you can investigate and explore. We’re starting with fibroblasts.”

“Fibroblasts are known to be modulators of inflammatory and other immune responses. They can secrete growth factors, cytokines, etc.—all kinds of things that can guide the immune response from being anti-inflammatory and quieting things down all the way to promoting inflammatory responses to stimulating tissue repair and growth.”

THE INAUGURAL OSTEOPATHIC RESEARCH FELLOW, CAILEE DEAN. Dr. Motyka expressed his thanks for Student Doctor Dean’s willingness to embark on this project as the inaugural fellow. “As a rising 3rd year student, she completed Sim Month and passed her boards, then she totally changed her life in a matter of a few weeks. She was set to start rotations, but once we were able to offer her the fellowship, she quickly moved back and changed her plans.” Student Doctor Dean is part of Dr. Motyka’s research team looking at prolotherapy as well as efficacy of OMT and while assisting with MS-I and MS-II instruction in the OMM labs , and working with Doctor Motyka in the University Health Center to receive more clinical training and OMT practice.

“With the assistance of CUSOM Medical Research Fellow, Cailee Dean, we are investigating how these cells respond to the therapeutic doses of compounds used in prolotherapy. How does their phenotype and expression of certain markers change? How does their function change? What factors do they secrete in response? We hope these in vitro studies will guide and inform other branches of the research project as we move into an animal model and then, eventually studies in humans.”

Dr. Snezana Petrovic & Dr. Tom Motyka: Physical function and dietary acid load in older adults (Metabolomics of oral bicarbonate supplementation)

Maintaining good physical function is a cornerstone of aging well. Yet, other than exercise, there are no established approaches to prevent age-associated decline in physical function, although more than half of adults over 65 reports at least one limitation in a basic activity of daily living! Because of that, novel and synergistic approaches to ameliorate age-associated disability, arthritis, and decline of physical function are urgently needed.

Our approach is to evaluate the effects of dietary interventions and supplements that may help older adults maintain good physical function and be free from arthritis. One such possibility is to neutralize harmful high dietary acid load of the contemporary diets. It can be done by increased consumption of fruits and vegetables or supplementation with small amounts of baking soda (the base, bicarbonate). Our current study uses cutting edge-analysis of small chemicals in the blood (the “metabolites”) of healthy elderly individuals who eat a diet with high dietary acid load but have taken controlled, small amounts of baking soda as a supplement to neutralize the high dietary acid load. We will compare them with those who also eat a diet with high dietary acid load, but used a placebo supplement instead of baking soda. We expect this analysis will tell us who are good candidates to benefit from such supplementation and which parts of metabolism may be involved in these beneficial effects.

The potential benefits of establishing novel ways to better preserve physical function and prevent arthritis by modifying diet or using baking soda as a supplement, go well beyond prevention of disability. The harmful effects of high dietary acid load we study include (but are not limited to) higher mortality, cognitive impairments, decrease in bone density, and faster decline of kidney function, to mention a few. Therefore, we expect the current analysis will have many useful ramifications to help older people age well, without disability and disease.

PROLOTHERAPY IN ANIMAL SUBJECTS: The project also has an interprofessional and interinstitutional collaboration with Penn State to look at prolotherapy using an animal model. “Our research will attempt to identify what cells and inflammatory markers may be involved which can help refine treatment regimens for osteoarthritis.” - DR. ADAM FOSTER AND DR. MAXX TOLER

Illustration: Amanda Dockery