May 2026 Vol. 126, No. 5

While medications have their place in the treatment of pain, incorporating osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) into pain treatment protocols may be beneficial. OMT has been administered with positive results in the reduction of pain, but it has been difficult to quantify palpable somatic changes, post-OMT. However, with technological advancement, adding objective documentation could potentially support the many published subjective studies demonstrating OMT effectiveness, reproducibility of OMT techniques, and the effect of OMT in pain reduction. This study documented objective changes in cervical hysteresis, consistent reproducible palpatory diagnosis, and treatment pressures with associated pain levels.

The National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners (NBOME) provides the Foundational Biomedical Sciences (FBS) examinations – FBS-Comprehensive and FBS-Targeted – to support the evaluation of osteopathic medical knowledge. However, the relationship between FBS performance and performance on the Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing Examination of the United States (COMLEX-USA) Level 1 has not been fully explored. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between performance on Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Achievement Test (COMAT) FBS assessments and COMLEX-USA Level 1 scores.

Depression and other mood disorders have a significant impact on patients, affecting their daily functioning, physical health, and emotional well-being. This systematic review contributes to the existing literature by evaluating published studies on the effectiveness of various manual-therapy modalities in reducing depression symptoms, and it provides a comparative examination of these modalities as complementary treatment options for depression and related mood disorders.