PEMF for Pain Back, Knee & Nerve Pain:
Our Analysis Review of 56 Pubmed Studies

Pulsed Electromagnetic Field (PEMF) therapy has been studied for managing pain across musculoskeletal and neuropathic conditions for more than 30 years now.

We reviewed 56 PubMed studies tagged for pain from our database and built original charts showing how outcomes vary by frequency, intensity, and what waveforms were used, with a few highlighted sections on studies for back, knee, and nerve pain.

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On this page

Disclaimer: This page is educational only and not medical advice. Always consult your clinician before starting or changing any therapy, and never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking treatment because of something you have read on this website, see our full disclaimer.

Mechanism – How PEMF May Reduce Pain

PEMF may help to reduce pain via different 4 mechanisms that we’ve seen in the research, these are inflammation reduction, nerve regeneration, analgesic effect & circulation improvement/accelerated wound healing.

  • Inflammation reduction
    • Quoting, “PEMF has been implicated in inflammatory response modulation. For example, PEMF treatment can reduce the secretion of pro‐inflammatory cytokine IL‐1β and TNF‐α”, (study link)
  • Neuropathic pain: promotes nerve regeneration
    • Quoting, “results indicated that PEMF can promote nerve regeneration and could be used for the treatment of neuropathic pain”, (study link) 
  • Analgesic Effects
    • Quoting, “In conclusion, PEMF generates analgesia by activating the NO pain pathway.”, (study link) 
  • Microcirculation & tissue repair
    • Quoting, “In this study, PEMF therapy seemed to accelerate wound healing and improve microcirculation.”, (study link), (circulation is a commonly studied benefit of PEMF)

In addition to the mechanisms by which PEMF may reduce pain there are other benefits of PEMF which may work via the same channels while achieving other desirable outcomes.

PEMF for Back Pain

Selected Studies

Plain-Language Summary

Across randomized trials, PEMF has demonstrated reductions in back pain with gains in mobility/function over the course of studies ranging from 4 to 8 weeks in length. Some studies have reported PEMF to enhance the results from traditional therapy significantly, while another reported that the effects of PEMF are actually less noticeable when used in conjunction with traditional therapy (like physiotherapy).

Takeaway Box

  • Expect gradual change: while some people notice relief right away, studies showed improvements over weeks and not minutes (we can speculate because of the 4 mechanisms by which PEMF may reduce pain).
  • Typical schedules: clinic RCTs often use 3×/week while home devices in trials often twice daily.
  • Integrate care: combine with prescribed movement/physiotherapy where advised; studies offered two different perspectives on combining PEMF with traditional therapy, one view was it enhanced results, another that it didn’t make a noticeable difference – layman’s terms: traditional therapy approaches can’t be ignored.

PEMF for Knee Osteoarthritis (KOA) & Joint Pain

Selected Studies

Plain-Language Summary

Multiple randomized trials reported meaningful KOA pain reduction and functional gains with PEMF. Protocols of the studies varied—from short daily sessions a half hour at a time to long‑duration daily exposures of 12 hours—of these studies all showed improvement over baseline, this might indicate that extended daily exposure doesn’t dramatically improve results over a shorter daily treatment.

Takeaway Box

  • Consistency matters: benefits generally accrue over weeks, however some studies indicated a rapid impact on pain (perhaps we can speculate due to the 4 mechanisms we found which PEMF affects pain) .
  • Protocol styles: short 15–30 min sessions vs extended daily treatment have both shown effects in trials.

PEMF for Nerve Pain (Radiculopathy & Neuropathic Models)

Selected Studies

Plain-Language Summary

Evidence across radiculopathy, neuropathic pain, and diabetic polyneuropathy points to benefits in pain and/or nerve function with PEMF. Protocols vary (clinic vs home; minutes/day vs twice daily), and effects likely relate to both nerve excitability changes, neuro‑inflammatory modulation as well as general reduction in inflammation contributing to pain experienced.

Takeaway Box

  • Target the anatomic pathway (e.g., lumbar region for leg radicular pain).
  • Study durations (these selected studies) ranged from 12 days to 3 weeks and all showed improvement over baseline indicating results can be experienced early (most noted more research is required)
  • PEMF is a non-invasive, conservative, adjunct treatment method for nerve pain.

Benefits Summarized (Quick Reference)

Here’s a list of benefits in short form:

  • Inflammation reduction: Dynamic live-cell imaging showed PEMF inhibited pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-6 transcription in disc nucleus pulposus cells exposed to IL-1α. (study link)
  • Neuropathic pain reduction: In a randomized trial of diabetic polyneuropathy, PEMF reduced pain and improved nerve conduction vs control. (study link) 
  • Low-back pain reduction: Adding pulsed electromagnetic field to Conventional physical therapy Protocol yields superior clinical improvement in pain, functional disability, and lumbar ROM in patients with non-specific low back pain than Conventional physical therapy alone. (study link)
  • Knee osteoarthritis pain reduction: A double-blind RCT reported better VAS and WOMAC pain scores with PEMF vs placebo after ~1 month. (study link)
  • Circulation & tissue repair benefits: A randomized, double-blind clinical trial in chronic diabetic foot ulcers found PEMF accelerated healing and improved microcirculation. (study link)
  • Analgesic (pain-blocking) mechanism: Experimental work indicates PEMF can produce analgesia via the nitric-oxide pathway for thermal pain, suggesting use in analgesic application to pain management. (study link)

Our PEMF for Pain Macro Study (56 Studies Analyzed)

We compiled and analyzed 56 PubMed studies tagged for pain.

Here’s how the big picture looks.

Overall Results

Here we have our overall results chart from this mini “macro” study of 56 pain related PEMF research studies.

Probably the most interesting of all of the charts we derived, we can see the overwhelming distribution of results found in these research studies found a positive benefit to their measured variable of the study.

Quick note which I try and remind often is that PEMF wasn’t ever found to be an outright cure for any condition, only that the research studies found some kind of benefit to the condition being investigated from PEMF therapy.

Key Point: Just over 80% of the PEMF studies for pain reported a positive outcome, (47 of the total 56 studies included.)

How We Built This Review

This review analysis of 56 pain related PEMF research studies stemmed from our database of PEMF studies which includes 335 total PEMF studies.

Using the tags provided by the research studies, as well as adding our own broader tags allowed us to categorize research studies by topic of focus.

In this case we took all studies tagged with the topic of “pain” or “back pain” and included them in this analysis.

For more info about the PEMF study database we built, check our About the PEMF studies page.

Limitations and Challenges of this Study

There were a number of challenges to creating this analysis.

The Pubmed website where these studies were pulled from doesn’t offer any way to sort by studies which included their PEMF setting (frequency, intensity) information and oftentimes topic tagging of the studies was too specific to be useful.

Research studies in the database typically asked a wide breadth of questions and outcome results reflect those questions/intents, for example, a paper aiming to test safety and finding “no harm” can still be “positive”—even absent a symptom benefit—if that was its primary
objective.

Initially our pool of studies was 550, of which we eliminated more than 200 from which weren’t really PEMF studies, and of our subsequent database of 335 studies we took the final 56 which had “pain” taggings.

In the end, the range of frequencies and intensities which studies used that found positive results is fairly wide and makes it difficult to draw any type of final conclusion around the “best” PEMF settings – this wasn’t unexpected however because there aren’t even any research studies on PEMF which have determined the best PEMF settings (that we’ve seen at least).

Let’s now proceed to look a little closer, at which frequencies and intensities were these results found.

Results by Frequency

Here we made a bar chart depicting which different PEMF frequency range “baskets” found what type of result, positive, neutral or negative depending on the color.

Key point: most of the positive results occurred in the 0-50Hz basket, followed by the 50 to 100Hz frequency basket.

Plain to see that of the 56 studies, the majority found positive results and they also found them at lower frequencies in the 0-50Hz range.

Most PEMF mats offer frequencies in this lower range which is good news for those looking to pair a mat to the research results.

Note: Some trials used multiple frequencies; we counted all reported settings in aggregate frequency visuals.

Results by Intensity

Same as with the frequency chart above, this bar chart depicts intensity range “baskets” and bar length shows how many studies were within each basket, while color shows study result.

Key point: the majority of positive results occurred between 0 to 25 Gauss; and the lower baskets 0 up to 10 Gauss seemed to show a few more neutral results than higher intensity baskets.

Here an important note is that not all the baskets are the same size or breadth, for example the first basket is only between 0 and 1 Gauss, 1 Gauss breadth, while 1-10 is a 10 Gauss breadth, and the next basket has a breadth of 15 Gauss, followed by 25, 50 and so on.

It’s important to notice this because we can see that combining the first 2 baskets, or 3, up to 25 Gauss max is the lion’s share of all the positive results.

An interesting point is that in the first two baskets there are a few more neutral findings than a little higher intensity, 10 to 25 Gauss.

This might be a point to consider while looking at a PEMF mat, maybe you’ll want one which will get you into the range of 10 to 25 Gauss.

Frequency × Intensity (Log Chart)

This chart shows something different than the two above, here we actually locate colored dots (green = positive, gray = neutral, black = negative), according to the study’s intensity and frequency setting.

This chart is in a log scale to be able to succinctly put all the dots on one chart, a log chart simply means that moving up or over by 1 line indicates a scale of 10 (2 lines over is 100 times higher or lower compared for example).

Key point: PEMF settings which found positive results are quite wide ranging in their frequency and intensity settings, we could speculate that a large variety of PEMF settings could provide benefits.

You can see along the vertical scale is the intensity, while the horizontal scale is frequency.

As mentioned this is a log chart, so the dot locations are (relatively) actually quite far apart – even though they look to be clustered in the middle, the next chart where we exclude outliers shows us that there is still a wide variety in settings.

Frequency × Intensity (Excluding Outliers)

The following chart is the same as the previous, only it isn’t log scale, and we did this by excluding the very, very high frequency and intensity PEMF setting studies.

In doing so we’re able to locate the studies on the chart via direct intensity/frequency numbers (instead of each line being 10x the previous line, this chart is linear).

Key point: having removed the extreme outliers we can see that the majority of positive results are found at 40 Gauss or below (majority below 20 Gauss) and at 50 Hz or below (with the majority below 30Hz).

It’s interesting to see that the apparent cluster in the middle of the log scale chart, was really just a bunch of studies that are actually spaced out quite a bit as we can see above; it’s just the log scaling of the previous chart which brought them together into a tighter cluster.

One can observe that at least on this chart with the outliers excluded, almost all positive results are below 40 Gauss in intensity, with the majority of those being 20 Gauss or lower, while the majority of all the positive results are falling at 50 Hz or lower with weighting heaviest below 20Hz.

By Waveform

The following chart simply shows, of the studies which noted which waveform was used, how many fell into each type of waveform basket.

Key point: the majority of PEMF studies for pain used the most common type of waveform, the sine wave (the sample size in this case is a little small with only 11 of the 56 studies reporting waveform type).

It’s clear to see that the PEMF studies for pain follow the same trend as the overall database which is that the sine wave is the most commonly studied.

In this case our sample size was relatively small with only 11 of the 56 studies mentioning waveform type, however typically when a study doesn’t mention waveform type they are using the standard sine wave.

By Year Published

Not a lot to explain on the following bar chart, simply what year were the studies published.

The only real takeaway is that interest in PEMF as a therapy is increasing year after year and we are likely to see many more studies published in the future.

Key point: steady increasing trend of studies being published on PEMF for pain after the year 2012, showing a growing interest in the field.

Frequently Asked Questions

Across 56 studies, most report reduced pain and/or improved function (over 80%). Strength of evidence varies by condition and protocol, but the overall signal is positive.

Low back pain randomized control trials showed reduced pain and better mobility with PEMF vs control over various study durations. We recommend considering infrared therapy in addition to PEMF for back pain management, from experience.

Human radiculopathy data and neuropathic animal models show benefit to nerve pain and nerve repair; mechanisms likely include inflammation modulation and ion channel effects.

Signals of improvement have appeared as early as week 1 in some studies and others compared results at the 4 week mark, however anecdotally many people notice some level of immediate relief upon treatment.

We did not identify studies showing PEMF causes pain, learn more on our PEMF Safety & Side Effects page.

Some example LBP trials used 12 sessions over 4 weeks (3/week). Some knee OA trials used long daily exposures. PEMF mat manuals often suggest daily use however consult your clinician for personalized recommendations.

We did not find controlled head‑to‑head frequency or intensity comparisons for pain relief. Our charts summarize which frequencies were used and their associated outcomes and it can be seen that there is heaviest weighting of positive results between 10 and 20 Gauss and below 30Hz.

56 Study
PEMF for Pain Database Explorer

This is the full list of only the 56 studies on the topic of pain from our larger 335 study PEMF database, you can use these search tools here to browse through or go page by page. Or check out the full set of search tools on the main 335 study database explorer page.

Instructions: make filter selections and then click search button to refresh results. To refresh list, click clear search.

See full 335 Study Explorer

Check out the full database at the button above which includes all study categories.

Disclaimer: copyright of all PEMF studies in this archive belong to the respective authors & their associates. We simply gathered the best PEMF studies we could and provide a new way to search using frequency, waveform, intensity & more. Further details below.

Beneficial Effects of Pulsed Electromagnetic Field during Cast Immobilization in Patients with Distal Radius Fracture

PMCID

PMC7060878

Categories

bone healing, fracture, pain relief

Published Date

2020

Subject

human

Waveforms

unknown

Intensities (G)

60, 100

Frequencies (Hz)

25, 30

PMCID

PMC7060878

Categories

bone healing, fracture, pain relief

Published Date

2020

Subject

human

Waveforms

unknown

Intensities (G)

60, 100

Frequencies (Hz)

25, 30

Non-invasive Complementary Therapies in Managing Musculoskeletal Pains and in Preventing Surgery

PMCID

PMC7260131

Categories

back pain, bone healing, pain relief

Published Date

2020

Subject

human

Waveforms

unknown

PMCID

PMC7260131

Categories

back pain, bone healing, pain relief

Published Date

2020

Subject

human

Waveforms

unknown

Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Affects the Development of Postmenopausal Osteoporotic Women with Vertebral Fractures

PMCID

PMC8302368

Categories

back pain, bone healing, brittle bone, pain relief

Published Date

2021

Subject

human

Waveforms

unknown

Intensities (G)

38.2

Frequencies (Hz)

8

PMCID

PMC8302368

Categories

back pain, bone healing, brittle bone, pain relief

Published Date

2021

Subject

human

Waveforms

unknown

Intensities (G)

38.2

Frequencies (Hz)

8

Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Inhibits Synovitis via Enhancing the Efferocytosis of Macrophages

PMCID

PMC7273431

Categories

arthritis, inflammation, pain relief

Published Date

2020

Subject

human

Waveforms

pulse

Intensities (G)

15

Frequencies (Hz)

75

PMCID

PMC7273431

Categories

arthritis, inflammation, pain relief

Published Date

2020

Subject

human

Waveforms

pulse

Intensities (G)

15

Frequencies (Hz)

75

Effectiveness of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy on pain, functional status, and quality of life in patients with chronic non-specific neck pain: A prospective, randomized-controlled study

PMCID

PMC7401674

Categories

bone healing, pain relief

Published Date

2020

Subject

human

Waveforms

unknown

Intensities (G)

85

Frequencies (Hz)

20

PMCID

PMC7401674

Categories

bone healing, pain relief

Published Date

2020

Subject

human

Waveforms

unknown

Intensities (G)

85

Frequencies (Hz)

20

Electromagnetic Field Therapy: A Rehabilitative Perspective in the Management of Musculoskeletal Pain – A Systematic Review

PMCID

PMC7297361

Categories

bone healing, chronic pain, pain relief

Published Date

2020

Subject

human

Waveforms

sine, square

Intensities (G)

1, 300

Frequencies (Hz)

1, 100

PMCID

PMC7297361

Categories

bone healing, chronic pain, pain relief

Published Date

2020

Subject

human

Waveforms

sine, square

Intensities (G)

1, 300

Frequencies (Hz)

1, 100

Disclaimer

Please note that Health Mat Review assumes no copyright over the following research studies, we've simply searched as thoroughly as possible through Pubmed for PEMF studies which provide the most information & provided a new way to search these studies via properties like waveform, frequency, intensity & more. All copyright and IP belongs to the authors & their associates.

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