Pain
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The McGill Pain Questionnaire has previously been shown to be useful in the differential diagnosis of painful conditions and has also been used to assess the efficacy of therapeutic intervention. We have applied this simple test to 42 patients with painful diabetic neuropathy and 49 control subjects with painful legs or feet of varying aetiologies. ⋯ Each questionnaire was given a single score as a result of the analysis, and this score correctly classified a total of 91% to either the neuropathic or control groups, and when applied prospectively to a further 25 ungrouped questionnaires a useful probability of their belonging to a diagnostic group was obtained. Use of the questionnaire might be a useful aid to the differential diagnosis of the painful diabetic leg.
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Following our earlier research, we further investigated a model that conceptualizes placebo phenomena as the result of conditioning and attempted to extend and replicate the finding that placebo responses can be conditioned in human subjects. Two groups of 10 subjects were told that they were receiving an analgesic which was in fact a placebo. During the conditioning, placebo administration was surreptitiously paired with an increase in the painful stimulus for half of the subjects and with a decrease for the other half. ⋯ A second type of experimental pain was also used to determine stimulus generalization. The results confirmed a previous finding that placebo responses can be conditioned in human subjects. The implications for clinical practice of a learning model of placebo behavior are discussed.