Pain
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Pain-related attentional interference has been found in both chronic pain and laboratory-inducted pain settings. However, few studies have examined such interference effects during common everyday painful episodes. Menstrual cycle-related pain is a common pain that affects a large number of women on a regular basis. ⋯ These results add to a growing literature that generally indicates that attentional interference occurs across a range of different types of pain, including common painful episodes. However, they also highlight that the specific nature of this interference effect may depend on the type pain under consideration. Implications of these findings are also considered.
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We investigated the contributions of warm and cool signals in generating the thermal grill illusion (TGI), a phenomenon in which interlaced warm and cool bars generate an experience of burning, and under some conditions painful, heat. Each subject underwent 3 runs, 2 of which tested the effects of preadapting subjects to the grill's warm or cool bars (while the interlaced bars were thermally neutral) on the subsequent intensity of the illusion. In a control run, all bars were neutral during the adaptation phase. ⋯ The inability of warm adaptation to attenuate the TGI is at odds with theories suggesting that the illusion depends upon a simple addition of warm and cool signals. While the grill's cool bars are necessary for the TGI's painfulness, we also observed that the more often a participant reported feeling coolness or coldness, the less pain he or she experienced from the TGI. These results are consistent with research showing that cool temperatures generate activity in both thermoreceptive-specific, pain-inhibitory neurons and nociceptive dorsal horn neurons.
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We previously reported that women exhibit greater heat pain adaptation to a prolonged painful stimulus and greater habituation to repeated painful stimuli than men. The neural mechanism underlying this sex difference is unknown. However, Bingel et al. (2007) have shown that pain habituation after 8 days of daily pain testing is associated with an increase in pain-evoked activity of the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), suggesting that pain habituation may be mediated via connectivity between the sgACC and the descending pain antinociceptive system. ⋯ These data indicate that brain circuitry in women may provide for greater engagement of the descending modulation system mediating pain habituation. In contrast, in men, the salience network may be more engaged, which could support greater sustained attention to pain, thereby preventing pain habituation. Furthermore, the hypothalamus findings suggest a more powerful stress and endorphin-based system at play in men than women.
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The goal of this study was to assess whether there is an association between ambient weather conditions and patients' clinical symptoms in patients with hip osteoarthritis (OA). The design was a cohort study with a 2-year follow-up and 3-monthly measurements and prospectively collected data on weather variables. The study population consisted of 222 primary care patients with hip OA. ⋯ The other weather variables were not associated with the WOMAC pain or function score. Our results support the general opinion of OA patients that barometric pressure and relative humidity influence perceived OA symptoms. However, the contribution of these weather variables (< or = 1%) to the severity of OA symptoms is not considered to be clinically relevant.