The journal of pain : official journal of the American Pain Society
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The Importance of the Treatment Rationale for Pain in Animal-Assisted Interventions: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Healthy Participants.
Animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) is a promising treatment approach for pain, but possible mechanisms still need to be elucidated. This study set out to investigate the analgesic effects of an animal provided with a treatment rationale in a randomized controlled trial employing a standardized experimental heat-pain paradigm. We randomly assigned 128 healthy participants to: dog treatment (DT), placebo treatment (PT), dog and placebo treatment (DPT), and no treatment (NT). ⋯ PERSPECTIVE: This study shows that the presence of an animal is not sufficient for animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) to have an analgesic effect on pain unless they are provided with a treatment rationale. This could imply that not only the animal but also contextual factors are important in AAIs. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinical Trials NCT04361968.