European journal of pain : EJP
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The aim was to psychometrically evaluate the Swedish version of the Multidimensional Pain Inventory (MPI-S) and the "brief screening version of MPI-S" for use in an elderly sample. ⋯ The MPI-S instrument may not be very useful for measuring pain among frail elderly. The brief screening version may instead be a better alternative to the full version of the MPI-S. However, the small number of observations may be the reason to the lack of fit, and further studies are warranted.
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Sensitisation of the pain detection system has been suggested to be involved in the pathogenesis of recurrent headache. In adults, increased sensitivity to pain has been found in patients with chronic tension type headache. Children with migraine or with unspecific headache report non-headache pains and interictal pericranial muscular tenderness more often than headache-free children. ⋯ Children with migraine experience more non-headache pains than children with episodic tension type headache and with no headache. However, neither children with migraine nor children with episodic tension type headache show increased interictal extracephalic muscular sensitivity for palpation.
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Complex Regional Pain Syndrome type 1 (CRPS 1) is a potentially incapacitating complication in which pain seems to be the most disabling factor. We performed a late follow up study of a well-defined CRPS 1 population more than eight years after diagnosis. The relationships between early and late impairments were studied with a view to outcome prediction and to investigate possible differences in long-term impairments according to initial CRPS 1 subdiagnosis (i.e. "warm" or "cold", diagnosed according to skin temperature measured via infrared thermometer). ⋯ Considerable impairments, as measured by ISS, are still present over eight years after first CRPS 1 diagnosis. These do not greatly change between one and eight years post-diagnosis. ISS outcomes are similar for "cold" and "warm" CRPS 1 diagnostic subgroups. Component ISS scores associated with pain appear to possess greatest predictive power.
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In this study we address the problem of the repeatability of autonomic responses in the experimental setting. In healthy volunteers, we measured the heart rate (HR) response to pain anticipation and to pain elicited with galvanic stimulation. ⋯ The parameters recorded included pain threshold, pain rating, HR response to pain anticipation and HR response to pain. We found a high correlation among the three sessions for all parameters, indicating that, as occurs for pain threshold and pain rating, individual differences in autonomic responses can be reliably reproduced as well, even though significant habituation develops.
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The objectives of this study were to examine the role of reactive oxygen species and oxidative stress in peripheral neuropathy and behavioural pain responses in experimentally induced chronic constriction injury (CCI) of sciatic nerve of rat. Effect of N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) administered intraperitoneally, was also investigated on CCI-induced neuropathic pain in rats. ⋯ This study identifies antioxidants superoxide dismutase and reduced glutathione, and oxidative stress as important determinants of neuropathological and behavioural consequences of CCI-induced neuropathy, and NAC may be a potential candidate for alleviation of neuropathic pain.