Papers of the Week

Pain and depression are common in the population and co-morbid with each other. Both are predictive of one another and are also associated with cognitive function; people who are in greater pain and more depressed respectively perform less well on tests of cognitive function. It has been argued that pain might cause deterioration in cognitive function, whereas better cognitive function earlier in life might be a protective factor against the emergence of disease. When looking at the dynamic relationship between these in chronic diseases, studying samples that already have advanced disease progression often confounds this relationship.