The journal of pain : official journal of the American Pain Society
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Observational Study
The Relationship between Education and Pain among Adults Aged 30-49 in the United States.
Pain is a major health problem among U. S. adults. Surprisingly little, however, is known about educational disparities in pain, especially among the nonelderly. ⋯ Overall, more educated Americans report substantially less pain than the less educated. However, adults with a GED and "some college" report more pain than other groups. Understanding the causes could help illuminate the mechanisms through which social factors influence pain.
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Pain catastrophizing has been recognized as an important and consistent psychosocial predictor of nearly every key pain-related outcome. The purpose of this study was to develop a new measure of pain catastrophizing using modern psychometric methodology. People with chronic pain (N = 795) responded to thirty items. ⋯ The Concerns About Pain item bank, short forms, and user manuals are free and publicly available to all users and can be accessed online at https://uwcorr.washington.edu/measures/. PERSPECTIVE: This article presents the development of the University of Washington Concerns About Pain scale, the first item response theory-based item bank of pain catastrophizing. The measure is intended for clinicians interested in improving outcomes of patients with chronic pain and for researchers who study impact of and treatment interventions aimed at reducing pain catastrophizing.
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Although pain has been shown to affect attentional performance, little is known about the time course of attention interruption after pain stimulus perception. The present study examined the time course of the effects of transient heat pain stimulation on 2 components of attention. Three groups of subjects performed attention tasks under pain, warmth, and no-stimulation control conditions, respectively. ⋯ We concluded that attentional orientation is selectively disrupted by both pain and warmth stimuli, but recovers earlier from pain. PERSPECTIVE: This article is concerned with the subsequent interruptive effect of pain on attentional orientation and executive attention by using the spatial cue task and the Stroop task, respectively. These measures offer options for investigating the time course of attention interruption after transient pain stimulation.
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Phantom limb pain (PLP) may be relieved using a visual representation of an intact limb. However, patients with distorted (telescoped) phantoms seem unable to associate with visualizations of intact limbs. A virtual arm visualization was matched to the individual's phantom perception and controlled in an augmented reality (AR) intervention. ⋯ The lip pursing task illustrated decreased cortical activity in the primary somatosensory cortex, which correlated to the reduced numerical rating scale scores of PLP severity. PERSPECTIVE: Two weeks of novel AR interventions in patients with telescoped phantoms demonstrated reduced PLP and reversal of cortical reorganization. This research highlights the potential of individualized AR interventions for PLP and indicate the importance of agency in this type of treatments.
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It is widely accepted that neuroinflammation in the spinal cord contributes to the development of central sensitization in neuropathic pain. Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activation plays a vital role in the development of neuroinflammation in the spinal cord. In this study, we investigated the effect of bexarotene (bex), a retinoid X receptor agonist, on MAPKs activation in chronic constriction injury (CCI)-induced neuropathic pain. ⋯ Therefore, bex might be a potential agent for the treatment of neuropathic pain. PERSPECTIVE: Bex could relieve neuropathic pain behaviors in animals by reversing MKP-1 downregulation and MAPKs activation in the spinal cord. Therapeutic applications of bex may be extended beyond cutaneous T-cell lymphoma.