Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Preliminary results from a randomized, controlled, cross-over trial of intrathecal oxytocin for neuropathic pain.
Compare intrathecal oxytocin, 100 µg to placebo on ongoing neuropathic pain and mechanical hyperalgesia and allodynia. ⋯ Although limited by the small number of subjects studied, oxytocin reduced pain more than placebo in all subjects. Further study of spinal oxytocin in this population is warranted.
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Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that patients with chronic pain display altered functional connectivity across distributed brain areas involved in the processing of nociceptive stimuli. The aim of the present study was to investigate how pain chronification modulates whole-brain functional connectivity during evoked clinical and tonic pain. ⋯ Across pain chronification stages, we found that widespread cortical networks increase their synchronization of delta oscillations in response to clinical and experimental nociceptive stimuli. In view of previous studies relating delta oscillations to salience detection and other basic motivational processes, our results hint at these mechanisms playing an important role in pain chronification, mainly in women.