From Symptom Modulation to Active Rehabilitation: Massage Therapy Across Acute, Subacute, and Chronic Nonspecific Musculoskeletal Pain - A Systematic Review and Conceptual Framework

This record contains version 1.0 of the protocol and supplementary materials for the systematic review: “From Symptom Modulation to Active Rehabilitation: Massage Therapy Across Acute, Subacute, and Chronic Nonspecific Musculoskeletal Pain—A Systematic Review and Conceptual Framework.” The review will evaluate the clinical effects and proposed mechanisms of therapist-delivered massage therapy in adults with acute, subacute, and chronic nonspecific musculoskeletal pain. It will integrate clinical-effectiveness evidence with human experimental and mechanistic studies and will examine whether short-term symptom modulation may facilitate movement, exercise, or active rehabilitation. The deposited materials include the full review protocol, database search strategies, eligibility criteria, screening procedures, data-extraction methods, evidence-classification rules, and the proposed conceptual framework. Status at the time of publication:Preliminary scoping searches, examination of selected known studies, and initial manuscript development had already been conducted. The definitive systematic database searches, formal screening of the complete search results, risk-of-bias assessment, and systematic data extraction had not yet been completed. Any amendments made after publication of version 1.0 will be documented in subsequent versions with the date, description, and justification for each change. Protocol DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21775009