• Leeana Aarthi Bagwath Persad, Peter Rowland Kamerman, and Antonia Louise Wadley.
• Brain Function Research Group, School of Physiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
• Pain Med. 2017 Nov 1; 18 (11): 212621372126-2137.

BackgroundStudies on relationships between sex, ethnicity, and pain have largely emanated from the United States and Europe. We compared cold (CPT) and pressure pain tolerance (PPT) in male and female South Africans of African and European ancestry and assessed whether psychosocial factors (including pain beliefs) predicted differences in pain tolerance.MethodsWe recruited 106 (62 female) students of African ancestry and 106 (55 female) of European ancestry and subjected them to a cold-pressor test and pressure algometry. Socioeconomic status (SES), pain catastrophizing, depression, anxiety, and pain beliefs were assessed as predictors of pain tolerance.ResultsCPT was lower in students of African compared with European ancestry (for both sexes), and PPT was lower in female than male students (for both ethnicities). Females were very accepting of men expressing pain and males less so. Males of African ancestry were least accepting but still tolerant. Multivariate analysis identified African ancestry, and particularly being a female of African ancestry, as strong predictors of lower CPT. Anxiety was a weak predict or of CPT. Sex was the only strong predictor of PPT on multivariate analysis (PPT females < males), and catastrophizing was a weak predictor. Female sex and African ancestry were strong predictors of acceptance of expression of pain in males. SES was a weak predictor of the Appropriate Pain Behavior Questionnaire-Malescore.ConclusionsDespite different cultural and social backgrounds from US and European cohorts, we saw similar patterns of sex and ethnic differences in CPT and PPT in an African cohort. Traditional psychosocial predictors of pain sensitivity predicted variation in the outcome variables but were not strong predictors.© 2017 American Academy of Pain Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

27 keywords...

hide…