The Clinical journal of pain
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Despite rapidly increasing intervention, functional disability due to chronic low back pain (cLBP) has increased in recent decades. We often cannot identify mechanisms to explain the major negative impact cLBP has on patients' lives. Such cLBP is often termed non-specific and may be due to multiple biologic and behavioral etiologies. Researchers use varied inclusion criteria, definitions, baseline assessments, and outcome measures, which impede comparisons and consensus. ⋯ The RTF believes these recommendations will advance the field, help to resolve controversies, and facilitate future research addressing the genomic, neurologic, and other mechanistic substrates of chronic low back pain. Greater consistency in reporting should facilitate comparisons among studies and the development of phenotypes. We expect that the RTF recommendations will become a dynamic document and undergo continual improvement.
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Prescription opioid analgesics play an important role in managing moderate to severe pain. An unintended consequence of the availability of these drugs is nonmedical use. We report rates and methods of nonmedical use of the analgesic tapentadol immediate release (IR) and other commonly prescribed opioid analgesics among US college students following the launch of tapentadol IR in June 2009. ⋯ Since its launch, rates of nonmedical tapentadol IR use by college students have been low and have decreased over time. The initial levels of reported nonmedical use may represent a brief period of experimentation after introduction.
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Current models of chronic pain recognize that psychosocial factors influence pain and the effects of pain on daily life. The role of such factors has been widely studied on English-speaking individuals with chronic pain. It is possible that the associations between such factors and adjustment may be influenced by culture. This study sought to evaluate the importance of coping responses, self-efficacy beliefs, and social support to adjust to chronic pain in a sample of Portuguese patients, and discuss the findings with respect to their similarities and differences from findings of studies on English-speaking individuals. ⋯ The findings provide support for the importance of the psychosocial factors studied in terms of adjustment to chronic pain in Portuguese patients, and also suggest the possibility of some differences in the role of these factors due to culture.
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The aim of this study was to evaluate sensitization and habituation of median somatosensory-evoked potential (MSEP) and correlate with migraine characteristics and allodynia. ⋯ The migraineurs have impaired cortical inhibition to somatosensory stimuli, and sensitization may be a feature of chronicity.