• Christine H Meyer-Frießem, Nadine Attal, Ralf Baron, Didier Bouhassira, Nanna B Finnerup, Rainer Freynhagen, Janne Gierthmühlen, Maija Haanpää, Per Hansson, Troels S Jensen, Harriet Kemp, Donna Kennedy, Anne-Sofie Leffler, Rice Andrew S C ASC Pain Research, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College, London, UK., Märta Segerdahl, Jordi Serra, Soeren Sindrup, Roma Solà, Thomas Tölle, Sigrid Schuh-Hofer, Rolf-Detlef Treede, Esther Pogatzki-Zahn, Christoph Maier, and Jan Vollert.
• Department of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care, Palliative and Pain Medicine, University Hospital Bergmannsheil Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
• Eur J Pain. 2020 Jul 1; 24 (6): 1058-1071.

Background And AimsHealthy women have generally been found to have increased experimental pain perception and chronic pain has a higher prevalence in female as compared to male patients. However, no study has investigated whether pain intensity and pain perception thresholds are distinct or similar between sexes within various chronic pain entities. We investigated whether average pain intensities and pain thresholds assessed using quantitative sensory testing (QST) differed between women and men suffering from three distinct chronic pain conditions: Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS type I), peripheral nerve injury (PNI) or polyneuropathy (PNP), as compared to paired healthy volunteers.MethodsQST data of 1,252 patients (669 female, 583 male) with PNI (n = 342), PNP (n = 571) or CRPS (n = 339), and average pain intensity reports from previously published studies were included. Absolute and z-values (adjusted for age and body region) of cold, heat, pressure (PPT) and pinprick pain thresholds were compared in generalized linear models with aetiology, duration of underlying pain disease and average pain intensity as fixed effects.ResultsAverage pain intensity during the past four weeks did not differ between women and men, in both mean and range. In women absolute pain thresholds for cold, heat and pinprick were lower than in males across all diagnoses (p < .05). However, after z-transformation these differences disappeared except for PPT in CRPS (p = .001).DiscussionPain thresholds in patients show only minor sex differences. However, these differences mimic those observed in healthy subjects and do not seem to be linked to specific pathophysiological processes.SignificanceFemale healthy participants and female patients with neuropathic pain conditions or CRPS I report lower pain thresholds compared to males, but pain intensity is similar and there is no sex difference in the extent to which the thresholds are altered in neuropathic pain or CRPS. Thus, the sex differences observed in various chronic pain conditions mimic those obtained in healthy participants, indicating that these differences are not linked to specific pathophysiological processes and are of minor clinical relevance.© 2020 European Pain Federation - EFIC®.

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