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Associate Professor
University of Alabama at Birmingham
I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Biography
My background is as a manual therapy clinician who after 15 years left a successful private practice to pursue a research career investigating physiological mechanisms underlying manual therapy and physical rehabilitation approaches aimed at alleviating pain and the improving human health. I received a NIH K01 Award (K01AT005935) that investigated the Effects of Lumbar Hypo & Hypermobility on Sensory Responses to Spinal Manipulation in an animal model. In this work, lumbar segmental mobility was artificially restricted unilaterally by placement of facet screw(s) at multiple spinal levels and the relationship between spinal joint dysfunction and HVLA-SM muscle spindle response was determined. I also conducted two studies recording trunk muscle spindle response using commercially available spinal manipulation devices which deliver extremely short spinal manipulative thrusts of 2-3ms duration. This work led to my current R21 award (R21AT010517-01) titled Proprioceptive Mechanisms Underlying Post-Spinal Manipulation Response in an NGF-induced Low Back Pain Model which characterizes primary afferent muscle spindle response to short (2-3ms) and long (100ms) HVLA-SM thrust durations in a low back pain model. Translational implications of this study include knowledge of how spinal manipulative forces are diminished by in vivo viscoelastic properties and whether or not deep tissue force thresholds are required to elicit prolonged inhibition of muscle spindle responsiveness following spinal manipulation which may have clinical implications. Currently, I am MPI on a NIH U24 grant (U24AT011969-01) titled Force-Based Manipulations Research Network with the goal of connecting interdisciplinary force-based mechanisms researchers and/or clinicians of diverse backgrounds to address notable gaps in mechanistic-related knowledge, create a platform for sharing and disseminationof this knowledge, financially support pilot research to address identified mechanistic knowledge gaps, and when appropriate, frame and integrate the new knowledge into a clinical context. More information on this ForceNET network can be found at https://sites.duke.edu/forcenet/
