Browse by Audience
Prospective cohort study OBJECTIVE.: The aims of this study were to evaluate the outcome of surgical as well as non-surgical treatment for patients with lumbar herniated disc (LHD) or lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) after two years and to identify predictors for non-success.
Learn More >Persistent and in particular neuropathic pain is a major health care problem with still insufficient pharmacological treatment options. This triggered research activities aimed at finding analgesics with a novel mechanism of action. Results of these efforts will need to pass through the phases of drug development, in which experimental human pain models are established components often implemented as chemical hyperalgesia induced by capsaicin. We aimed at ranking the various readouts of the human capsaicin-based pain model with respect to the most relevant information about the effects of a potential reference analgesic. In a placebo-controlled, randomised cross-over study, seven different pain-related readouts were acquired in 16 healthy subjects before and after oral administration of 300 mg pregabalin. The sizes of the effect on pain induced by intradermal injection of capsaicin were quantified by calculating Cohen's d. While in four of the seven pain-related parameters, pregabalin provided a small effect judged by values of Cohen's d exceeding 0.2, an item-categorization technique implemented as computed ABC analysis identified the pain intensities in the area of secondary hyperalgesia and of allodynia as the most suitable parameters to quantify the analgesic effects of pregabalin. Results of this study provide further support for the ability of the intradermal capsaicin pain model to show analgesic effects of pregabalin. Results can serve as a basis for the designs of studies where the inclusion of this particular pain model and pregabalin is planned.
Learn More >Chronic pain is a common issue in adolescents. Prevalence of pain and associated factors present differently in sex and age subgroups, however, the interaction of sex and age combined has not been thoroughly assessed. This study aimed to identify psychosocial and health factors associated with chronic pain in younger and older adolescent girls and boys.
Learn More >Cortical spreading depression (CSD) underlies the neurobiology of migraine with aura (MWA). Animal studies reveal networks of microvessels linking brain-meninges-bone marrow. CSD activates the trigeminovascular system, evoking a meningeal inflammatory response. Accordingly, this study examines the upregulation of an inflammatory marker in extra-axial tissues in migraine with visual aura.
Learn More >ICHD-3 criteria for chronic migraine (CM) include a mixture of migraine and tension-type-like headaches and do not account for patients who have a high frequency of migraine but no other headaches.
Learn More >This study aims to investigate whether intra-network dynamic functional connectivity and causal interactions of the salience network is altered in the interictal term of migraine. 32 healthy controls, 37 migraineurs without aura and 20 migraineurs with aura were recruited. Participants underwent a T1-weighted scan and resting-state fMRI protocol inside a 1.5T MR scanner. We obtained average spatial maps of resting-state networks using group independent component analysis, which yielded subject-specific time series via a dual regression approach. Salience network ROIs (bilateral insulae and prefrontal cortices, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) were obtained from the group average map via cluster-based thresholding. To describe intra-network connectivity, average and dynamic conditional correlation was calculated. Causal interactions between the default-mode, dorsal attention and salience network were characterised by spectral Granger's causality. Time-averaged correlation was lower between the right insula and prefrontal cortex in migraine without aura vs. with aura and healthy controls (p<0.038, p<0.037). Variance of dynamic conditional correlation was higher in migraine with aura vs. healthy controls and migraine with aura vs. without aura between the right insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (p<0.011, p<0.026), and in migraine with aura vs. healthy controls between the dorsal anterior cingulate and left prefrontal cortex (p<0.021). Causality was weaker in the <0.05 Hz frequency range between the salience and dorsal attention networks in migraine with aura (p<0.032). Overall, migraineurs with aura exhibit more fluctuating connections in the salience network, which also affect network interactions, and could be connected to altered cortical excitability and increased sensory gain.
Learn More >Effects of emotion suppression on physical health might be contingent on culture. Existing research on emotion regulation has mainly included western participants. Herewith the question arises, whether this gained expertise is transferable to an Asian culture.
Learn More >The definition of chronic migraine has long been debated. Recently, it was suggested to define subjects with at least 8/migraine days as chronic migraine; that is, incorporating so-called high frequency episodic migraine (eight or more migraine days but less than 15 headache days per month).
Learn More >Little is known about the perceptions and attitudes of participants who volunteer in studies involving authorized deception. Thus, this cross-sectional pilot study measured, for the first time, the perceptions about participation in an authorized-deception placebo analgesia study in chronic pain patients with fibromyalgia and assessed whether their perceptions differed from healthy controls.
Learn More >