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“Pain, Stress, and Emotions”: Uncontrolled trial of a single-session, telehealth, emotional awareness and expression therapy class for patients with chronic pain.

Trauma- and emotion-focused chronic pain interventions, particularly Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), show much promise for reducing pain and improving functioning. We developed a novel, single-session, telehealth-delivered EAET class ("Pain, Stress, and Emotions"; PSE) and tested it on adults with chronic pain of mixed etiology.

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Meditative-based diaphragmatic breathing vs. vagus nerve stimulation in the treatment of fibromyalgia-A randomized controlled trial: Body vs. machine.

Vagus nerve innervation electrical stimulation and meditative-based diaphragmatic breathing may be promising treatment avenues for fibromyalgia.

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The not so hidden impact of interictal burden in migraine: A narrative review.

Migraine is a highly prevalent neurological disease of varying attack frequency. Headache attacks that are accompanied by a combination of impact on daily activities, photophobia and/or nausea are most commonly migraine. The headache phase of a migraine attack has attracted more research, assessment tools and treatment goals than any other feature, characteristic, or phase of migraine. However, the migraine attack may encompass up to 4 phases: the prodrome, aura, headache phase and postdrome. There is growing recognition that the burden of migraine, including symptoms associated with the headache phase of the attack, may persist between migraine attacks, sometimes referred to as the "interictal phase." These include allodynia, hypersensitivity, photophobia, phonophobia, osmophobia, visual/vestibular disturbances and motion sickness. Subtle interictal clinical manifestations and a patient's trepidation to make plans or commitments due to the unpredictability of migraine attacks may contribute to poorer quality of life. However, there are only a few tools available to assess the interictal burden. Herein, we examine the recent advances in the recognition, description, and assessment of the interictal burden of migraine. We also highlight the value in patients feeling comfortable discussing the symptoms and overall burden of migraine when discussing migraine treatment needs with their provider.

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Gut bacteriome, mycobiome and virome alterations in rheumatoid arthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic destructive autoimmune disease of the joints which causes significant pain, functional disability, and mortality. Although aberrant immune cell activation induced by the imbalance between T helper Th1/Th17 and Treg cells is implicated in the RA development, its etiopathogenesis remains unclear. The presence of mucosal inflammation and systemic IgA-isotype-autoantibodies (anti-citrullinated peptide antibodies and rheumatoid factor) in pre-clinical RA supports the mucosal origin hypothesis involving altered microbiota in disease development. The gut microbiota comprises diverse bacteria, fungal and viral components, which are critical in developing host immunity. Alterations in microbial abundance are known to exacerbate or attenuate immune responses in the gut microenvironment subsequently affecting the joints. Further, these changes can provide biomarkers for disease activity and outcome in RA. Most of the research till date has been focused on describing gut bacterial components in RA. Studies on gut mycobiome and virome components in RA are relatively new and burgeoning field. Given the paucity of mycobiome or virome specific studies in RA, this review, discusses the recent findings on alterations in gut bacterial, fungal, and viral components as well as their role in regulating the spectrum of immune-pathogenic events occurring in RA which might be explored in future as a potential therapeutic target. Further, we provide an overview on inter-kingdom interactions between bacteria, fungi, and viruses in RA. The current understanding on gut microbiota modulation for managing RA is also summarised.

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Neuroinflammation in the medial prefrontal cortex exerts a crucial role in bone cancer pain.

Bone cancer pain (BCP) is one of the most common types of pain in cancer patients which compromises the patient's functional status, quality of life, and survival. Central hyperalgesia has increasingly been identified as a crucial factor of BCP, especially in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) which is the main cortical area involved in the process of pain and consequent negative emotion. To explore the genetic changes in the mPFC during BCP occurrence and find possible targets for prediction, we performed transcriptome sequencing of mPFC in the BCP rat model and found a total of 147 differentially expressed mRNAs (DEmRNAs). A protein-protein interaction (PPI) network revealed that the DEmRNAs mainly participate in the inflammatory response. Meanwhile, microglia and astrocytes were activated in the mPFC of BCP rats, further confirming the presence of neuroinflammation. In addition, Gene Ontology (GO) analysis showed that DEmRNAs in the mPFC are mainly involved in antigen processing, presentation of peptide antigen, and immune response, occurring in the MHC protein complex. Besides, the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis revealed that DEmRNAs are mainly enriched in the pathways of phagosome, staphylococcus aureus infection, and antigen processing, in which MHCII participate. Furthermore, immunostaining showed that MHCII is mainly located in the microglia. Microglia are believed to be involved in antigen processing, a key cause of BCP. , minocycline (MC) treatment inhibits the activation of microglia and reduces the expression of MHCII and proinflammatory cytokines, thereby alleviating BCP and pain-related anxiety. Taken together, our study identified differentially expressed genes in the BCP process and demonstrated that the activation of microglia participates in the inflammatory response and antigen process, which may contribute to BCP.

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Migraine, Words and Fiction. Book Review.

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Interaction of chronic pain, obesity and time of day on cortisol in female human adolescents.

Adolescent obesity augments and impedes the treatment of chronic pain. This is associated with increased systemic inflammation and is more prominent in females. In addition, pain and obesity each independently affect the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. However, the interaction of pain and obesity on the HPA axis and the potential for sexual dimorphism in this phenomenon is not established. We hypothesized that dysregulation of the HPA axis occurs in female human adolescents with chronic pain, obesity, or the combination of the two and is associated with gonadal steroids. We measured serum cortisol, estradiol, and testosterone in 13-17-year-old adolescent females ( = 79) from venous blood drawn during the daytime (0830-1730 h) and analyzed the data and partitioned by morning vs. afternoon sampling time. Subjects were categorized as healthy weight/no pain (controls; BMI = 56 percentile [37-71]), healthy weight with chronic pain, obese without pain (BMI = 97 percentile [95-99]), or the combination of obesity and chronic pain. Serum cortisol was lower with chronic pain and/or obesity compared to healthy controls and was lower with chronic pain and obesity compared to chronic pain alone (healthy weight). The lower serum cortisol in the pain alone group was more prominent in the morning compared to the afternoon. There was no relationship between serum estradiol and testosterone and study group. The decrease in the anti-inflammatory and other pain-ameliorating effects of cortisol may contribute to chronic pain and its resistance to treatment with concurrent obesity in female adolescents.

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Involvement of the cerebellum in migraine.

Migraine is a disabling neurological disease characterized by moderate or severe headaches and accompanied by sensory abnormalities, e.g., photophobia, allodynia, and vertigo. It affects approximately 15% of people worldwide. Despite advancements in current migraine therapeutics, mechanisms underlying migraine remain elusive. Within the central nervous system, studies have hinted that the cerebellum may play an important sensory integrative role in migraine. More specifically, the cerebellum has been proposed to modulate pain processing, and imaging studies have revealed cerebellar alterations in migraine patients. This review aims to summarize the clinical and preclinical studies that link the cerebellum to migraine. We will first discuss cerebellar roles in pain modulation, including cerebellar neuronal connections with pain-related brain regions. Next, we will review cerebellar symptoms and cerebellar imaging data in migraine patients. Lastly, we will highlight the possible roles of the neuropeptide calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) in migraine symptoms, including preclinical cerebellar studies in animal models of migraine.

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Proinflammatory profile in the skin of Parkinson’s disease patients with and without pain.

Pain is a common non-motor symptom of Parkinson`s disease (PD), however, its pathomechanism remains elusive.

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A retrospective study of the correlation between herpes zoster neuralgia and the serum neuron-specific enolase level in the largest dermatological hospital in Zhejiang province, China.

We studied the changes and clinical significance of the serum neuron-specific enolase (NSE) level in peripheral blood of patients with post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN).

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