Pain Type and Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain Syndrome Treatment

Interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS) is a debilitating, incurable, and costly pain condition affecting approximately 3-8 million individuals in the United States and is extremely challenging to treat. Treatment advances in IC/BPS have stalled due to a lack of clear understanding of the condition, as symptoms and presentations vary widely. For these reasons, national organizations have prioritized the need to improve both treatment options and understanding of IC/BPS. Leading multi-institutional research networks have now identified that individuals with IC/BPS have distinct subgroups, or "phenotypes," largely characterized by the distribution of pain throughout the body. At the same time, the chronic pain field is adopting a new approach driven by mechanisms of illness and treatment. Growing evidence suggests that different phenotypes of patients with IC/BPS respond differently to medical intervention. The overall goal of this project is to assess how IC/BPS phenotype may affect response to two different therapies often given without regard to patient phenotype, pelvic floor physical therapy (PT) and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for IC/BPS. The investigator is proposing a randomized mechanistic trial to evaluate which participants may benefit from each treatment (Aim 1) and evaluate whether neurobiological mechanisms may moderate outcomes and change with treatment (Aim 2). The investigator hypothesizes that a prediction of which participants will respond preferentially to either form of treatment based on reported bodily pain distribution (pelvic pain primarily, pain outside of the pelvis). This project has great potential to tailor treatment and improve future IC/BPS precision-medicine care efforts.