Human Studies

Patients with chronic pain commonly report sleep problems, and the evidence for a relationship between sleep disturbance and pain seems robust. The day-to-day associations between these constructs are less well studied, particularly with objective sleep measures such as actigraphy. Moreover, the concurrent presence of negative affective symptoms, as well as seasonality effects at extreme latitudes may complicate it further. Here, we studied 56 patients with chronic primary musculoskeletal pain conditions, contributing data in two separate 7-day data-collection periods during the summer and winter, respectively. The effect of self-reported sleep quality, and actigraphy measured sleep duration, efficiency and timing on next-day pain, as well as the effect of pain on the same sleep indices were estimated by generalised linear mixed regression models. The models were additionally adjusted for age, sex, education, data collection period, weekend, season and mental distress, with the latter two also specified as moderators. We observed a significant effect of pain as a predictor of next-night sleep quality (p = .003) and marginally of next-night sleep duration (p = .079). Conversely, sleep quality tentatively predicted next-day pain (p = .063). No other day-to-day associations were present. Mental distress was the strongest predictor of pain, but it did not modify the sleep-pain associations, nor did season. In conclusion pain, sleep quality and mental distress are closely related, underscoring the importance of encompassing this complexity in assessment and treatment of patients with chronic pain.

Although several questionnaires assessing fear of movement exist, it still is challenging to identify individuals who might benefit more from exposure for chronic pain than from other psychological approaches, and vice versa. Psychological approaches for chronic pain cannot advance towards the often called-for "tailored approaches" because of limited knowledge about treatment predictors. Our aim was to evaluate the additional predictive value of avoidance behavior based on behavioral observation.

Parents have a vital influence over their child's chronic pain treatment and management. Graded exposure in-vivo treatment (GET) is emerging as a promising intervention for youth with chronic pain. Yet, little is known about how parents perceive GET and its impact on their child's pain condition. This study aimed to characterize caregivers' experiences over the course of their child's GET using longitudinal coding and thematic analysis of parent narratives.

For people who experience social inequities and structural violence, pain and related care are inexorably linked to experiences of injustice and stigma. The purpose of this study was to examine in greater depth the experiences of pain and discrimination and stigma across diverse marginalized communities in order to recommend equity-oriented healthcare approaches.

Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is characterized by chronic widespread pain accompanied by symptoms like fatigue, insomnia, depression, anxiety and cognitive impairments. In addition to central nervous pain sensitization, emotional dysregulation may be involved in FMS pathogenesis. This study investigated central nervous correlates of affective and attentional processing in FMS using an implicit task.

Pain is a universal phenomenon, but is also inherently private and subjective – there's no objective test for its existence. Sufferers rely on language to describe their pain experience. The McGill Pain Questionnaire paved the way for incorporating language into pain assessment and recent research has explored aspects of pain language such as metaphors and grammatical patterns. This study investigated how chronic pain sufferers use language to describe their pain experience. Three focus groups were conducted ( = 16, age 22-74 years,  = 46.6 years) with participants attending an outpatient chronic pain management program in Sydney, Australia. Participants were asked to describe aspects of their pain experience. The language which participants utilized to talk about their pain experience. Thematic analysis identified five superordinate themes: Isolation, Physical Sensations of Pain, Pain Personified, Pain as Overwhelming, and Coping with Pain. Across themes, participants relied on metaphorical language, which reflects the complex, multidimensional aspects of pain as well as the desire to effectively communicate it to others. This study underscores research indicating the complexity of pain experience and hence pain language, and suggests that single word adjectival measures are inadequate to completely capture its complexity. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION Chronic pain is now considered a disease in and of itself, with patient's pain language being an important study area due to the lack of objective tests for pain. In both assessment and rehabilitation, patients rely on metaphorical pain language in order to facilitate understanding and garner support from others. Pain metaphors may provide a useful target for interventions such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, particularly when addressing catastrophic thinking patterns.

To explore the relationship between symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)/myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and fibromyalgia (FM). The hypothesis predicated that there would be no significant differences between the group's symptom experience.

Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) has been shown to be effective in the management of chronic widespread pain (CWP); we now test whether it can onset among adults at high risk.