A human experimental immobilization model and complex regional pain syndrome

The mechanisms responsible for inducing and maintaining Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) are still unclear, and the lack of human CRPS models has been an obstacel in further studying the underlying mechanisms. We have investigated the effects of forcarm immobilization on regional sensory and autonomic functions in healthy subjects [19,20]. Human forcarm immobilization induces a CRPS-like syndrome of brief duration, suggesting that immobilization may play a role at least in elements of CRPS. However the immobilization-induced regional changes do no explain all symptoms in CRPS, which is also underlined by new results pointing toward a global automatic disturbance in CRPS (Tenkelsen et al., submitted).