Pain physician
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Meta Analysis
Gray Matter Abnormalities in Patients with Chronic Primary Pain: A Coordinate-Based Meta-Analysis.
Many structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to identify gray matter abnormalities in patients with chronic primary pain (CPP), but the findings have been inconsistent. ⋯ We identified gray matter changes in CPP patients and female patients, as well as a close relationship between CPP and mental disorders. With the chronicity of pain leads to changes in relevant brain regions, which makes treatment more challenging and may have synergistic effects with affective disorders. More prospective longitudinal structural MRI studies of CPP examining the associations between those variables and gray matter in a larger population should be conducted. Additional prospective longitudinal structural MRI studies of CPP with larger sample sizes to confirm the relationships between these variables and gray matter are needed as well as gender differences of CPP in brain structure and function.