Papers of the Week

The phenomenon of pain remains one of the most important challenges in medicine and biology, which often causes disability in humans and worsens the quality of life. The pain is a variable, subjective experience, and it is impossible to fully understand it without getting to know the physiological mechanisms beyond sensory damage of the tissues. There are some gender differences in pain perception, particularly, females tend to be more sensitive towards experimental pain. Interestingly, the observed data is consistent for males throughout life, but as for females, parameters vary according to the age and ovarian-menstrual cycle (OMC) phases. Study aims to assess correlation between pain perception and indices of hostility in males and females (in the follicular phase of OMC cycle). The sample of this study included volunteer students, ages 18 to 23. The main selection criterium for participants was their health state; Those without chronic pain, excess body weight (assessed by BMI), cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrine, etc. disorders were selected for participation in the study. Prior to the start of the study, participants were given information about their rights and written informed consent was obtained. Participants were informed that they could refuse to take part in the study at any stage. All procedures and protocol of the study were approved by Tbilisi State Medical University Biomedical Research Committee. The study was conducted in compliance with all requirements and regulations of International Pain Association for biomedical observation and experiments. Ovarian-menstrual cycle of the women participating in the research were evaluated using relevant questionnaires. All experiments were performed in the follicular phase of menstrual cycle (7-11 days of the cycle). At this stage, study was conducted in starvation state- 10-12 hours after the last meal. According to our experiment, the findings about gender differences of psychologic parameters and their linkage to heat and cold sensitivity coincides with previous study results, where pain threshold and tolerance to the pain are positively correlated with high degree of assault. Our findings demonstrate that pain perception by humans, besides intensity of nociceptive stimuli, depends on psychophysiologic parameters. The findings correlate with the data from previous studies, particularly to the idea, that negative emotions and different types of assault define individual correlates of pain perception, pain threshold and tolerance to the pain. It is quite clear that further research is warranted in order to make evidence-based statements and recommendations for clinical practice, including treatment protocols for pain management. It is quite possible, that in near future, assessing psychoemotional condition will be one of the most important tools in pain management. Besides, by evaluating psychoemotional parameters, it may become possible to predict the probability of progressing acute pain into chronic pain, which will be essential predictive information to decrease the risk of disease chronization.