Pain
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The objective of this preliminary study was to examine the extent to which affective marital interaction related to depressive symptoms in persons with chronic pain and their spouses and to pain severity in persons with pain. Couples from the community completed self-report surveys and engaged in a videotaped conversation on a topic of mutual disagreement that was coded for three affect types (i.e., anger/contempt, sadness, humor). Humor was positively related to marital satisfaction in both partners. ⋯ These exploratory findings can be interpreted in light of emotion regulation and pain empathy theories. For example, partners who have not experienced pain themselves may fail to empathize with persons in pain, thus preventing effective emotion regulation. When both spouses report chronic pain, expressions of negative affect may instead promote emotion regulation because the affect is experienced with a spouse who may be more empathetic.
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It has become increasingly apparent that women suffer a disproportionate amount of pain during their lifetime compared to men. Over the past 15 years, a growing number of studies have suggested a variety of causes for this sex difference, from cellular to psychosocial levels of analysis. From a biological perspective, sexual differentiation of pain appears to occur similarly to sexual differentiation of other phenomena: it results in large part from organizational and activational effects of gonadal steroid hormones. ⋯ For clinical pain, the review is limited to a few syndromes for which there is considerable evidence for estrogenic involvement: migraine, temporomandibular disorder (TMD) and arthritis. Because estrogens can modulate the function of the nervous, immune, skeletal, and cardiovascular systems, estrogenic modulation of pain is an exceedingly complex, multi-faceted phenomenon, with estrogens producing both pro- and antinociceptive effects that depend on the extent to which each of these systems of the body is involved in a particular type of pain. Forging a more complete understanding of the myriad ways that estrogens can ameliorate vs. facilitate pain will enable us to better prevent and treat pain in both women and men.
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Cancer-related pain in outpatient adult populations remains high and has a direct effect on functional status. Factors that affect functional status have been explored separately, but the inter-relatedness of those factors has not been examined. Using a cross-sectional design, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between pain level, beliefs about pain, symptom distress, perceived control over pain, and functional status in 304 ambulatory cancer patients who experienced cancer-related pain within the past 2 weeks. ⋯ Patients' perceived control over pain may be an important component in pain management. The direct and mediating effects of perceived control and symptom distress suggest areas of further research. Interventions to increase knowledge and decrease barriers to pain control have the potential for increasing perceived control over pain.
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Endometriosis (ENDO) is a painful disorder defined by extrauteral endometrial growths. It is created in rats by autotransplanting pieces of uterus (which form cysts), or, for shamENDO, fat (no cysts). ENDO induces vaginal hyperalgesia, likely via central sensitization. ⋯ We predicted that the opposing influences of estradiol on ENDO- and OVX-induced hyperalgesia would cancel each other. As predicted, OVX had no effect on ENDO-induced hyperalgesia and estradiol replacement alleviated it. These results suggest that, in intact rats, ENDO-induced vaginal hyperalgesia is exacerbated by estradiol, and that different mechanisms underlie ENDO-induced versus OVX-induced vaginal hyperalgesia.