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Chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMSP) disorders are among the most prevalent and disabling conditions worldwide. It would be advantageous to have common outcome measures when comparing results across different CMSP research studies.
Learn More >Low back pain (LBP) is a global public health challenge, which causes high health-care costs and the highest burden on society in terms of years lived with disability. While patient expectations for improvement may have effects on LBP treatment outcomes, it remains unclear if psychological profiles modify this relationship. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to investigate if (1) patient expectations predicted short-term outcome, and (2) psychological profile, pain intensity, and self-rated health modified the relationship between expectations and outcome.
Learn More >Somatosensory assessment within the orofacial region may be performed using highly standardised quantitative sensory testing (QST). However, the function of the C tactile (CT) afferent, a nerve fibre linked to the perception of pleasant touch, is usually not evaluated. Furthermore, the perception of unpleasantness is also rarely assessed; a dimension not only limited to a painful experience. Therefore, the primary aim was to apply standardised QST stimuli as well as standardised pleasant stimuli and evaluate their potential capacity for evocation of perceived pain, pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the facial region.
Learn More >Fibromyalgia (FM) is a highly prevalent and disabling syndrome characterized by chronic widespread musculoskeletal pain and a broad range of cognitive and affective symptoms. Up to now, the pathogenesis of FM is unknown although a peripheral and central sensitization involving an imbalance on immune biomarkers appears to have a relevant role in its aetiology. The aim of this study was to extend previous clinical findings of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to both its impact on clinical symptomatology and immune biomarkers (IL-6, CXCL8, IL-10 and hs-CRP), and also to explore the role of biomarkers as predictors of efficacy.
Learn More >Increasing pain during physical activity is as an important, but often poorly assessed, barrier to engaging in activity-based rehabilitation among people with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Preliminary work has addressed this problem by developing new clinical measures of sensitivity to physical activity (SPA). Indices of SPA are generated by evaluating how pain changes in relation to brief physical tasks. Three strategies have been identified for structuring SPA-related physical tasks (self-paced, standardized, and tailored). This cross-sectional study aimed to comparatively estimate the extent of the three SPA tasks' evoked pain responses, predictive value of pain severity and pain interference, and their underlying psychological and sensory constructs, among 116 adults with chronic musculoskeletal pain.
Learn More >Multidisciplinary pain management (MPM) is a generally-accepted method for treating chronic pain, but heterogeneous outcome measures provide only limited conclusions concerning its effectiveness. Therefore, further studies on the effectiveness of MPM are needed to identify subgroups of patients who benefit, or do not benefit, from these interventions. Our aim was to analyze health-related quality of life (HRQoL) changes after MPM and to identify factors associated with treatment outcomes.
Learn More >Consciousness, defined here as the quality of awareness of self and the corresponding sensory environment, is considered to be one of most enigmatic and contentious areas of scholarly dissection and investigation. The subjective experience of pain is constructed and modulated by a myriad of sensory, cognitive and affective dimensions. Thus, the study of pain can provide many inroads to a concept like consciousness that the traditional sense modalities do not. Mindfulness defined here as non-reactive awareness of the present moment, can uniquely control and/or modulate particular substrates of conscious experience. Thus, in combination with brain imaging methodologies, we propose that the interactions between pain and mindfulness could serve as a more comprehensive platform to disentangle the biological and psychological substrates of conscious experience. The present review provides a brief synopsis on how combining the study of pain and mindfulness can inform the study of consciousness, delineates the multiple, unique brain mechanisms supporting mindfulness-based pain relief, and describes how mindfulness uniquely improves the affective dimension of pain, an important consideration for the treatment of chronic pain.
Learn More >Previous studies have demonstrated important associations between personal resources and pain interference. Using latent profile analysis, the present study (a) identified subgroups of individuals with chronic pain who have different personal resource profiles; (b) explored sociodemographic differences among subgroups; and (c) examined how these subgroups differ in pain interference. Research Method/Design: Study 1 is based on daily diary and survey data from 220 individuals with fibromyalgia (FM). Study 2 is based on 4 annual surveys of 483 individuals with long-term neurological/neuromuscular disease or injury, and chronic pain. Modifiable personal resource variables including sense of resilience, social support, pain acceptance, and sleep quality were included in latent profile analyses.
Learn More >Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a mounting public health problem with substantial morbidity and mortality. Stress involvement in the course of OUD is generally accepted, but little is understood about the underlying neurobiological mechanisms in part due to a lack of laboratory-based models for chronic stress exposure. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be construed as a psychopathological prototype of chronic stress owing to the essential diagnostic criteria of experiencing and reliving a stressful event(s). Literature search on OUD and PTSD neurobiology was undertaken and the relevant data were integrated within four key areas: (1) OUD and PTSD comorbidity, (2) neurobiological overlap between OUD and PTSD; (3) chronic opioids- and stress-induced alterations of the reward-, stress- (i.e., "anti-reward") and related circuits and (4) mechanistically informed treatments of OUD and/or PTSD. Our findings suggest that even in the absence of prior opioid exposure PTSD patients may be susceptible for the development of OUD by the reason of similar (to those induced by opioids) reward alterations that may be targeted for therapeutic interventions.
Learn More >Discrepancies between self-reported and actigraphy sleep measures are common, producing ambiguity about which are better predictors of experimental pain outcomes. The current study tested if pain intensity during and situational pain catastrophizing following experimental pain were differentially predicted by self-reported or actigraphy sleep measures in patients with chronic temporomandibular disorder (TMJD) or healthy controls (HCs).
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