The International Conference on Chiropractic Research: Promoting Excellence in Chiropractic Research Worldwide

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This issue of Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics publishes the prize-winning papers from the International Conference on Chiropractic Research (ICCR) held at the Sydney Convention Centre, Australia, from June 16 to 18, 2005. This conference was jointly sponsored and administered by the World Federation of Chiropractic (WFC) and the Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research (FCER) and was held as part of WFC's 8th Biennial Congress.

This conference was the inaugural ICCR, and it combined two events that were previously held separately. The first is the WFC's original research symposium and competition, which has been held every 2 years since 1991 as part of WFC's Biennial Congress. In recent times, the competition has had four prizes totaling US$15,000 generously sponsored by the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners. Prize-winning papers have traditionally been published in Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, in January or February of the year following the WFC Congress. Past prize winners are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. WFC Congress prize-winning papers for the 1991–2003 conference and the WFC/FCER prize-winning papers for the 2005 conference

Year and location	Prize	Title and authors	Country
1991—Toronto, Canada	1	Functional Outcomes of Low Back Pain: Comparison of Four Treatment Groups in a Randomized Controlled Trial	United States
		Chang-Yu Hsieh, DC; Alan Adams DC; Malcolm Pope, PhD
	2	Role of the Cervical Sympathetic Trunk in Regulating Anaphylactic and Endotoxic Shock	Canada
		Stephen Waddell, DC; Joseph Davidson, PhD; Malcolm Pope, PhD; A Dean Befus, PhD; Ronald Mathison, PhD
	3	A Blinded Randomized Clinical Trial of Manual Therapy and Physiotherapy for Chronic Back and Neck Complaints: Physical Outcome Measures	The Netherlands
		Bart Koes; Henk van Mameren, PhD, MD; Alex HM Essers; Gard MJR Verstegen; Domine M Hofhuizen; Jo P Houben; Paul G Knipschild, PhD
	3	Differences in Treatment History With Manipulation for Acute, Subacute, Chronic and Recurrent Spine Pain	United States
		John J Triano, DC; Maria A Hondras DC; Marion McGregor, DC
1993—London, UK	1	Pain Distribution: Relationship to Pain Severity and Disability in Back Pain Patients	United Kingdom
		Jennifer Bolton, PhD; Mark Christensen
	2	Lymphocyte Profiles in Patients With Chronic Low-Back Pain Enrolled in a Clinical Trial	United States
		Patricia Brennan PhD; Maria A Hondras
	3	A Comparison of Radiographic Signs of Degeneration to Corresponding MRI Signal Intensities in the Lumbar Spine	United States
		Dennis Marchiori, DC, MS; Ronnie L Firth, DC; Ian McLean, DC; Robert C Tatum, DC
	3	The Epidemiology of Chiropractic in Europe	United Kingdom
		Palle Pedersen, DC; Alan Breen, DC, PhD
1995—Washington, DC	1⁎	The Assessment of Intramuscular Discrimination Using Signal Detection Theory: Its Potential Contribution to Chiropractic	New Zealand
		Bernadette Murphy, DC, MSc; Noel Dawson, PhD; RJ Irwin, PhD
	2	Neck EMG Changes Associated with Meningeal Noxious Stimulation	Canada
		Howard T Vernon, DC; JW Hu PhD; I Tatourian
	3	Short-term Responsiveness of Manual Thoracic End Play Assessment to Spinal Manipulation: A Randomized Controlled Trial	United States
		Mitchell Haas, DC; David Panzer, DC; David Peterson, DC; David Raphael, DC
1997—Tokyo, Japan	1⁎	Responsiveness of Pain Scales: A Comparison of Three Pain Intensity Measures in Chiropractic Patients	United Kingdom
		Jennifer Bolton, PhD; Rachel C Wilkinson, BScChiro
	2	Research Productivity of Chiropractic College Faculty	United States
		Dennis Marchiori, DC, MS; William Meeker, DC, MPH; Cheryl Hawk, DC, PhD
	3	A Pilot Study of the Purchase of Manipulation Services for Acute Low-Back Pain	United Kingdom
		Neil Scheurmier; Alan Breen, DC, PhD
	PP	Chiropractic Management of Primary Dysmenorrhoea	South Africa
		Bridget Bromfield, MTechChiro
1999—Auckland, New Zealand	1⁎	Effects of Sacroiliac Joint Manipulation on Quadriceps Inhibition in Patients With Anterior Knee Pain: A Randomized Controlled Trial	Canada
		Esther Suter, PhD; Gordon McMorland, DC; Walter Herzog, PhD; Robert Bray, MD
	2	The Effects of Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis (DTP) or Tetanus Vaccination on Allergies and Allergy-Related Respiratory Symptoms among Children and Adolescents in the United States	United States
		Eric L Hurwitz, DC, PhD, Hal Morgenstern, PhD
	3	A Randomized Controlled Trial of Chiropractic Spinal Manipulation Therapy for Migraine	Australia
		Peter J Tuchin, GradDipChiro; Henry Pollard, GradDipChiro; Rod Bonello, DC, DO
	PP	A Combined Approach for the Treatment of Cervical Vertigo	Brazil
		Eduardo Bracher, DC, MD; Cheri Bleggi, DC; Clemente Almeida, MD; Roberta Ameida, MD; Andre Duprat, MD
2001—Paris, France	1⁎	Central Motor Excitability Changes following Spinal Manipulation: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study	United States
		J Donald Dishman, DC, MSc; Kevin A Ball, PhD; Jeanmarie Burke, PhD
	2	The Effectiveness of Physical Modalities Among Low-back Pain Patients Randomized to Chiropractic Care: Finding From the UCLA Low-back Pain Study	United States
		Eric L Hurwitz, DC, PhD; Hal Morgenstern, PhD; Philip I Harber, MD, MPH; Gerald F Kominski, PhD; Thomas R Belin, PhD; Fei Yu, PhD; Alan H Adams, DC
	3	Chiropractic and the National Healthcare System: A Basis for Partnership in the UK	United Kingdom
		Jennifer Langworthy, MPhil; Alan Breen, DC, PhD; S Vogel, DO; R Collier, MSc, MCSP
	PP	Can Recurrent Cervical Artery Dissections Tell Us Anything About the Cases of Manipulation-Induced Stroke?	United States
		Sidney M Rubinstein, DC, MSc; Scott Haldeman, DC, MD, PhD
2003—Orlando, Fla	1⁎	Biomechanical and Neurophysiological Responses to Spinal Manipulation in Patients with Lumbar Radiculopathy	United States
		Christopher J. Colloca, DC; Tony S Keller, PhD; Robert Gunzberg, MD, PhD
	2	Adverse Reactions to Chiropractic Treatment and Their Efforts on Satisfaction and Clinical Outcomes Among Patients Enrolled in the UCLA Neck Pain Study	United States
		Eric L Hurwitz, DC, PhD; Hal Morgenstern, PhD; Maris Vassilaki, MD, MPH; Lu-May Chiang, MS
	3	Assessing the Clinical Significance of Change Scores Recorded on Subjective Outcome Measures	United Kingdom
		Hugh Hurst, DC; Jennifer Bolton, PhD
	PP	Guidance Hypothesis With Verbal Feedback in Learning a Palpation Skill	United States
		R Kevin Pringle, DC, MEd
2005—Sydney, Australia	1⁎	Spinal Manipulation Reduces Pain and Hyperalgesia Following Lumbar Intervertebral Foramen Inflammation in the Rat	United States
		Xue-Jun Song, MD, PhD; Qiang Gan, Ju-Li Cao
	2	Spinal Manipulative Therapy Reduces Inflammatory Cytokines But Not Substance P Production in Normal Subjects	Canada
		Stephen Injeyan, DC, PhD; Julita A Teodorczyk-Injeyan, PhD; Richard Ruegg, DC, PhD
	3	Paraspinal Muscle Spindle Responses to the Duration of a Spinal Manipulation Under Force Control	United States
		Joel G Pickar, DC, PhD; Yu-Ming Kong, PhD

PP indicates private practice award.

The second event now joining the ICCR is FCER's International Conference on Spinal Manipulation. This conference was originally conducted annually in the United States but, in recent years, has also been held in Bournemouth in the United Kingdom (1996), Montreal (1993), Vancouver (1998), and Toronto (2002). The International Conference on Spinal Manipulation was first held in Washington, DC, in 1990 as the leading venue for presentation of original peer-reviewed research papers pertaining to chiropractic, averaging 100 platform and poster presentations in each of the nine conventions held up to and including 2002. At these conferences, the FCER gave special recognition to an individual whose research efforts were deemed to have special impact on generating and disseminating significant new information relating to chiropractic theory or practice, this person being designated as “FCER Researcher of the Year.”

Over time, the congresses of the WFC likewise became an important venue for both platform and poster research presentations, with the papers given at each of these meetings often published in the peer-reviewed literature. As many leading researchers were submitting their work to both the separate events of the WFC and FCER, the decision was taken in early 2004 to combine the meetings under the name of the WFC's and FCER's ICCR. The second ICCR will take place as part of the WFC's 9th Biennial Congress, to be held together with the European Chiropractors' Union's 75th Anniversary Convention in Vilamoura, The Algarve, Portugal, from May 17 to 19, 2007.

For the ICCR in Sydney, 183 abstracts of original research were submitted from 16 countries. Thirty-six were accepted for platform presentation, and 105 for poster presentation. It is a reflection of the increased international development of chiropractic education and research during the past generation that the greatest number of research presentations accepted, in numerical order, came from chiropractic researchers at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; the Palmer College of Chiropractic, Davenport, Iowa; and the University Anhembi Morumbi, Saõ Paulo, Brazil.

To be eligible for prizes, researchers were required to submit a completed paper in a format suitable for publication in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics. These papers were reviewed by a preliminary judging panel comprising members of the WFC Research Council and Dr Anthony Rosner. This panel short-listed 10 papers for the three open prizes and two papers for the Private Practice Award. Prizes were then awarded by a final judging panel comprising Dr Scott Haldeman (chair, WFC Research Council, WFC), Dr Anthony Rosner (director of Education and Research, FCER), Dr Claire Johnson (editor, Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics), Dr Peter Brooks (rheumatologist and executive dean, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Queensland, Australia), Dr Niels Grunnet-Nilsson (chiropractic clinical research specialist, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southern Denmark), and Dr Gregory Kawchuk (chiropractic basic sciences specialist, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta, Canada). All short-listed papers were worthy of prizes and, as is apparent from the following prize-winning papers from the United States, Canada, and Australia, a large amount of impressive research is now being conducted at chiropractic colleges in a number of world regions.

All researchers, whether doctors of chiropractic or others with research interests relevant to the field of chiropractic, are encouraged to submit original research to the second ICCR (www.wfc.org/congress2007), which will be held in Portugal in May 2007 (Fig 1).

Fig 1. Web site information.