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Effect of Increased Pain Tolerance on Exercise Performance

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University of Copenhagen

Status

Completed

Conditions

Opioid Use
Exercise

Treatments

Other: Placebo
Drug: Tramadol

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT03934411
H-17028397

Details and patient eligibility

About

Clinical prescription and use of opioids is a clear problem in large parts of the world and has the recent years received an increasing publicity in sports. This is in particular due to the World Anti-Doping Agency monitoring list, which reveal that endurance athletes utilize the opioid Tramadol frequently with the aim to enhance performance according to anecdotal evidence.

Studies investigating the effect of tramadol on exercise performance in healthy humans is limited to one study in moderate trained subjects. However, this effect may be different in highly trained subjects due to the effects of chronic exercise. Furthermore, ingestion of tramadol may impact motor-cognitive performance and it remains unknown whether tramadol can be detected in highly trained subjects following exercise.

In the present study the investigators apply a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled counterbalanced cross-over design to investigate whether tramadol treatment improves a preloaded cycling time trial performance, whether it affects motor-cognitive performance and whether it is detectable following exercise.

Enrollment

16 patients

Sex

Male

Ages

18 to 39 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

  • Maximal oxygen uptake < 55 ml O2/min/kg
  • Plasma creatinine concentration between 60-105 umol/L
  • Plasma alanine aminotransferase between 10-70 U/L
  • Familiarized with endurance training for at least a few years

Exclusion criteria

  • Donated blood within the last 3 months
  • Exposed to an altitude greater than 1000 m above sea level within the last two months
  • Smoking

Trial design

Primary purpose

Basic Science

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Crossover Assignment

Masking

Double Blind

16 participants in 2 patient groups, including a placebo group

Tramadol treatment
Experimental group
Treatment:
Drug: Tramadol
Placebo treatment
Placebo Comparator group
Treatment:
Other: Placebo

Trial contacts and locations

1

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Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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