Effectiveness of Neural Mobilisation on Pain Intensity, Functional Status, and Physical Performance in Adults with Musculoskeletal Pain - A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis.

"The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article."

"Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within RISE (Health Research Network: From the Lab to the Community, R&D Unit (reference DFA/BD/12526/2022)."

"This systematic review was performed following the guidelines of the Cochrane Handbook and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA)., The protocol was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42021288387) and published elsewhere. All changes to the original protocol are justified in Supplemental File 1. The eligibility criteria were defined as follows: Population – People over 18 years old with musculoskeletal pain without neurological deficits. Trials involving participants with neurological impairment (motor and/or sensory) and with neuropathic descriptors were excluded (e.g., subjects with radicular symptoms [decreased reflexes, significant loss of strength or major changes in sensation, symptoms related to specific dermatomes and/or myotomes]; tunnel syndromes; diabetic neuropathy; spinal cord injury; stroke; neurodegenerative diseases; severe mechanosensitivity or alterations in nerve conduction [hypoesthesia or anaesthesia]). Trials involving post-surgical pain (e.g., spinal arthrodesis, breast cancer surgery) were also excluded, as well as participants with clinical signs or a diagnosis of infection diseases, tumour/cancer, severe depression, or other psychiatric disorders.Intervention – Neural mobilisation techniques used as a single intervention or as part of multimodal interventions.Comparisons – Both active (e.g., a different variant of neural mobilisation technique, other therapy) and inactive control interventions (e.g., sham therapy, no treatment).Outcomes –Primary outcomes: pain intensity and functional status. Secondary outcomes: health and skill-related components of physical fitness (flexibility, balance, and muscular strength), pressure pain threshold, conditioned pain modulation, data related to immune responses, and morphological and neurophysiological changes in peripheral nerves.Study design – Randomised, quasi-randomised, and crossover trials. The remaining study designs were excluded.We searched for articles published until June 2023 in the data sources described in . The search was performed by one reviewer (FB). Full search strategies are detailed in Supplemental File 2."