Although the effects were small, the intervention is quick to apply, is maintained in situ for one week, and does not require ongoing commitment of time and effort, as do some other physiotherapy interventions (eg, exercises). Therefore, some patients may consider that the costs and inconvenience involved are small and that a combination of small reductions in pain and disability may make taping worthwhile overall. The borderline effect on lumbar flexion range of motion

is interesting. Kinesio Taping on the lower trunk increased active lower trunk flexion range of motion in healthy subjects (Yoshida and Kahanov 2007). Although various mechanisms

selleck chemical were postulated to explain this, some of which could apply in our participants, we must also consider that the mild reduction in pain could explain the greater range in our participants. The mild analgesic effect may also explain the greater performance of the trunk muscles on the McQuade test. Unfortunately, we did not record whether pain or fatigue was the limiting factor for participants during this test. Another possibility is that the presence of the taping led to greater awareness and, in turn, greater muscular activation around the area during the intervention period. This may have introduced a mild endurance training effect on the trunk musculature. The precise mechanisms underlying the effect of Kinesio

Taping on musculoskeletal pain are not yet clear. Some authors have RO4929097 hypothesised that pain is relieved by Kinesio Taping because sensory modalities operate within interconnecting, intermodal and cross-modal networks (McGlone and Reilly 2010). Others have suggested that keratinocytes of may be non-neural primary transducers of mechanical stimuli, probably via a signal transduction cascade mechanism (eg, intracellular Ca2+ fluxes) to evoke a response on adjacent C-fibres (Lumpkin and Caterina 2007). Another hypothesis is that the cutaneous stretch stimulation provided by Kinesio Taping may interfere with the transmission of mechanical and painful stimuli, delivering afferent stimuli that facilitate pain inhibitory mechanisms (gate control theory) and pain reduction (DeLeo 2006, Paolini et al 2011). A further possible mechanism by which Kinesio Taping induced these changes may be related to the neural feedback received by the participants, which may improve their ability to reduce the mechanical irritation of soft tissues when moving the lumbar spine (Kase et al 2003). Furthermore, Kase and colleagues (1996) proposed a theoretical framework to explain the decrease in lumbar pain-associated disability observed immediately after Kinesio Taping.