Complementary Approaches for Military Women with Chronic Pelvic Pain: A Randomized Trial

Introduction: Active-duty (AD) women suffer with chronic pelvic pain (CPP) while providers tackle diagnoses and treatments to keep them functional without contributing to the opioid epidemic. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of non-invasive, self-explanatory mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) or self-paced healthy lifestyle (HL) interventions on CPP in AD women. Methods: We conducted a six-week interventional prospective study with AD women aged 21–55 at Mountain Home (MTHM), Idaho. Women were randomly assigned to MBSR (N = 21) or HL (N = 20) interventions. The primary outcome was pain perception. Secondary outcomes were depression and circulating cytokine levels. Results: Women in the MBSR group exhibited reduced pain interference ( P  < .01) and depression ( P  < .05) alongside decreased IL-4 ( P  < .05), IL-6 ( P  < .05), eotaxin ( P  < .05), MCP-1 ( P  = .06), and IL-1ra ( P  < .01) and increased VEGF ( P  < .05). Those in the HL group did not have changes in pain, however, did exhibit reduced depression ( P  < .05) alongside decreased GM-CSF ( P  < .05) and increased TNFα ( P  < .05), SDF-1 ( P  < .01), and IL-1ra ( P  < .01). Conclusion: AD women receiving MBSR or HL had reduced depression scores and altered circulating cytokine levels, however only those receiving MBSR had reduced pain perception. Findings support MBSR as an effective and viable behavioral treatment for AD women suffering from CPP.