Effects of Nutritional Interventions in the Control of Musculoskeletal Pain: An Integrative Review

Mendonça CR, Noll M, Castro MCR, Silveira EA · Nutrients

Collects the food-versus-musculoskeletal-pain trials in one place, berries and olive oil among them. Fourteen of the seventeen report less pain, which is a consistent direction; how much less is not answerable from here, because the review pools nothing. On the marker data, only eight of the trials measured inflammatory markers, and only two of those eight found any of them fall. In the oil trials specifically, both studies that measured markers found no change in them alongside the pain result.

Population

17 clinical trials of nutritional interventions with musculoskeletal pain endpoints, published 2000 to March 2020 in English, Spanish or Portuguese

Intervention

Dietary interventions across diets, oils, whole fruits and supplements

Comparator

Varies — control or placebo group in each included trial

Limitations

Integrative review without pooled estimates or formal bias appraisal — the authors say a meta-analysis was impossible given how differently the trials were run and measured, and they include trials that were neither randomised nor blinded. Follow-up ranges from 6 to 104 weeks, adverse effects were not assessed, and the search was capped at twenty years. Self-financed, with partial institutional support.