A BOURNEMOUTH physiotherapist is taking part in a £1million study exploring how philosophy can be used to find the causes of unexplained medical symptoms.

Matthew Low, who works for the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals Trust, has been selected to take part in the groundbreaking research along with other leading international health experts.

The musculoskeletal physiotherapist is one of a 27-strong team made up of fellow physiotherapists as well as health scientists and philosophers, who have been awarded the grant by the Research Council of Norway.

The team’s four-year study has been inspired by people with complex medical problems such as chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome and lower back pain, which science has not always supplied a satisfactory explanation for.

For example, possible causes for fibromyalgia, characterised by chronic widespread pain and a heightened and painful response to pressure, have been researched extensively without a full answer. Factors such as genetics, lifestyle, chemical imbalances in the brain and psychology have all been explored.

However, Mr Low and his colleagues will be hoping to find new insight by looking at the issues surrounding such illnesses from a completely new starting point.

The project is the largest of its type ever undertaken in both healthcare and philosophy and has been described by those involved as a ‘groundbreaking collaboration between the sciences and humanities’.

Mr Low, who has worked at the trust for 12 years, said: “Medically unexplained means that we are unable to find a common set of causes or obvious classifications for these conditions.

“These are widespread and some are estimated to account for between 25 to 50 per cent of symptoms reported to doctors in primary care.

“Each patient presents a unique combination of symptoms and a unique expression of their condition, and this project could lead to research methods that focus more on the complexity of real-life clinical decision making rather than claiming to know the causes in a trial, giving us a more reliable outcome.”

The team is called CauseHealth and has its first meeting in October this year to discuss the philosophical foundations of causation and the impact that it has on evidence based practice, research methodology and clinical practice.