Two grants a year for Massage Therapy research in BC, each worth $4000- deadline March1, 2010

The purpose of this seed grant is to provide funding for research in the development of the art and science of massage therapy.

The aim is to add to the overall massage therapy body of knowledge as practiced by RMT’s in BC. MTABC seed grant was established to further massage therapy research in BC.

For further information please go to our web page - http://bit.ly/7×8fTw

The Holistic Health Research Foundation has announced its 2010 open research competition in massage therapy. For 2010, there will be
TWO funding competitions, the first with a March 1, 2010 application deadline and the second with a September 30, 2010 application deadline.

The MTRF invites applications in areas indicated above. For BOTH competition cycles, a total funding amount of $50,000 is offered. Grant
applications up to $15,000 will be considered.

For more information please their web page: http://www.holistichealthresearch.ca/massagefund.htm

The link below has some tips for beginning as well as more advanced PubMed searchers.

10 + 1 PubMed tips by a clinical librarian Laika

“PubMed is the platform that offers free  access to 18 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals. 18 million, that is a tremendous amount of literature! And that is one of the main problems: the sheer amount makes it very difficult to “pick the needle from the haystack”.”

Fascia Research Congress 2012

October 28, 2009

For Immediate Release

BC’s Registered Massage Therapists
Welcome the World Fascia Research Congress To Vancouver in 2012

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Massage Therapists’ Association of British Columbia (MTABC), we are pleased to welcome the 2012 World Fascia Research Congress to Vancouver.

“This announcement in Amsterdam, Netherlands today is a recognition of the excellence, quality and commitment of BC’s Registered Massage Therapists (RMTs). Over 700 BC RMTs participated in the 2007 Congress replays, reflecting the impact that this research has on massage therapy” said Damon Marchand, MTABC President.

Our 2012 event will be the third Fascia Congress. The first congress took place in Boston, Massachusetts at Harvard Medical School in 2007. The second Fascia Congress is occurring this week at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. The Vancouver Congress will be the largest, with a delegate registration expected to be over 1,000.

The theme for the 2012 Fascia Congress will be the practical application of research to practice.

“We know that the profession of massage therapy is excited about this research and about this Congress. We look forward to welcoming leading researchers, clinicians and educators from around the world to Vancouver” said Marchand.

– 30 -

For further information:
Brenda Locke, Executive Director
604-873-4467
locke@massagetherapy.bc.ca

Backgrounder

Fascia Background:

Fascia has both general and special functions in the human organism. As such, it is the subject of a wide range of scientific research. Similarly, fascia and its properties are of central importance to clinicians practicing in various conventional therapies and in the wide range of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities.

Recent scientific research in the field of the human fasciae has resulted in several significant findings. Combined, the results from the worldwide research activities constitute a body of significant and important data. It is our shared vision that it is time to gather together all the latest and best scientific information about the body’s connective tissue matrix.

Future conferences will continue to provide collegial settings for the mutual benefit and collaboration of basic scientists, academics, and professionals engaged in the many clinical practices where fascia is an important consideration.

About Fascia:

Fascia is the soft tissue component of the connective tissue system that permeates the human body. It forms a whole-body continuous three-dimensional matrix of structural support. Fascia interpenetrates and surrounds all organs, muscles, bones and nerve fibers, creating a unique environment for body systems functioning. The scope of our definition of an interest in fascia extends to all fibrous connective tissues, including aponeuroses, ligaments, tendons, retinaculae, joint capsules, organ and vessel tunics, the epineurium, the meninges, the periostea, and all the endomysial and intermuscular fibers of the myofasciae.

There is a substantial body of research on connective tissue generally focused on specialized genetic and molecular aspects of the extracellular matrix. However, the study of fascia and its function as an organ of support has been largely neglected and overlooked for many years. Since fascia serves both global, generalized functions and local, specialized functions, it is a substrate that crosses several scientific, medical, and therapeutic disciplines, both in conventional and complementary/alternative modalities.

Among the different kinds of tissues that are involved in musculoskeletal dynamics, fascia has received comparatively little scientific attention. Fascia, or dense fibrous connective tissues, nevertheless potentially plays a major and still poorly understood role in joint stability, in general movement coordination, as well as in back pain and many other pathologies. One reason why fascia has not received adequate scientific attention in the past decades is that this tissue is so pervasive and interconnected that it easily frustrates the common ambition of researchers to divide it into a discrete number of subunits, which can be classified and separately described. In anatomic displays the fascia is generally removed, so the viewer can see the organs nerves and vessels but fails to appreciate the fascia, which connects, and separates, these structures.

Clinician Perspective on Fascia:

There is increasing interest in certain therapeutic communities in the role that fascia plays in musculoskeletal strain disorders such as low-back instability and postural strain patterns of all types, fibromyalgia, pelvic pain, and respiratory dysfunction, chronic stress injures, as well as in wound healing, trauma recovery and repair. The Fascia Research Congress seeks to present recent findings that advance knowledge of biomechanical and adaptive properties of fascia that may account for clinical observations in health and dysfunction.

The expanding worldwide scientific research on the human fascial tissues forms a body of knowledge pertinent to a wide range of professionals engaged in conventional and CAM modalities, who serve individuals afflicted with specific pathologies or injuries of fascial tissue. The latest research will further the mechanistic understanding of many manual therapies and CAM modalities which contact, mechanically manipulate, penetrate, or otherwise involve fascial tissues.

IN-CAM and the Holistic Health Research Foundation of Canada are excited to announce the creation of the CANADIAN CAM RESEARCH FUND (CCRF) to ensure continuity of funding opportunities for Canadian CAM researchers and research trainees. The CCRF is now accepting research application submissions.

This competition will replace IN-CAM’s Pilot Research Funding Competition and will be separate from Holistic Health Research Foundation’s Massage Therapy Research Fund competition and other research competitions. This fund will be administered through the Holistic Health Research Foundation of Canada.

Application Deadline:December 15, 2009. Grant recipients will be announced in March 2010.

Read more here

BMJ 1995;311:485 (19 August) – Statistics notes – Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

Douglas G Altman,  J Martin Bland

“Randomised controlled clinical trials that do not show a significant difference between the treatments being compared are often called “negative.” This term wrongly implies that the study has shown that there is no difference, whereas usually all that has been shown is an absence of evidence of a difference. These are quite different statements.”

“While it is usually reasonable not to accept a new treatment unless there is positive evidence in its favour, when issues of public health are concerned we must question whether the absence of evidence is a valid enough justification for inaction.”

“When we are told that “there is no evidence that A causes B” we should first ask whether absence of evidence means simply that there is no information at all”

IN-CAM (Canadian Interdisciplinary Network for CAM research) and the Holistic Health Research Foundation of Canada are both well established organizations which aim to facilitate and support CAM research activities in Canada. We are excited to announce the creation of a joint partnership to carry on an annual CAM research grant competition which will be funded through the Canadian CAM Research Fund to ensure continuity of funding opportunities for Canadian CAM researchers and research trainees.

The first Canadian CAM Research Fund annual grant competition is scheduled to be announced on September 15, 2009. Applications will be due by December 15, 2009. Announcements of grant recipients will be made in March 2010. These deadlines will also apply to future competitions.

For more information, please visit the IN-CAM website: http://www.incamresearch.ca/index.php?id=22,455,0,0,1,0
You may direct questions or comments regarding the Canadian CAM Research Fund to: Ania Kania at akania@ucalgary.ca or Keren Brown at kbrown@holistichealthresearch.ca

The number of papers published on massage using the search terms “massage and clinical trial” and “find all search terms”.
Searching CINAHL and Psycinfo simultaneously in EBSCO gave me these numbers

1990-1999  = 213
2000-2004 = 595
2005-2009 = 1371

These are my numbers. There is no control for “other” types of massage such as cardiac, prostate or other use of rubbing/massage.
A selection team would weed out none MT related uses. How ever in CINAHL and PsychInfo there is, in my experience, less noise in the results than what comes from Medline searches.
This article posted here goes in to detail of the issues around searching for MT research.

This case highlights the necessity of confirming study result with replication of the initial work.

Research can be faked,  how ever more commonly researchers can make a mistake in the study design or their reporting of the results. When clinicians search for research to inform their practises it is crucial for them to be aware of the strength and quality of the research they are intending to use.