Journal of pain research
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Journal of pain research · Jan 2014
Interstitial Cystitis - Elucidation of Psychophysiologic and Autonomic Characteristics (the ICEPAC Study): design and methods.
Interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS) is relatively common and associated with severe pain, yet effective treatment remains elusive. Research typically emphasized the bladder's role, but given the high presence of systemic comorbidities, the authors hypothesized a pathophysiologic nervous system role. This paper reports the methodology and approach to study the nervous system in women with IC/BPS. The study compares neurologic, urologic, gynecologic, autonomic, gastrointestinal, and psychological features of women with IC/BPS, their female relatives, women with myofascial pelvic pain (MPP), and healthy controls to elucidate the role of central and peripheral processing. ⋯ The study represents a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to sampling autonomic and psychophysiologic characteristics of women with IC/BPS. Despite divergent opinions on study methodologies based on specialty experiences, the study has proven feasible to date and different perspectives have proved to be one of the greatest study strengths.
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Journal of pain research · Jan 2014
An open-label, long-term study examining the safety and tolerability of pregabalin in Japanese patients with central neuropathic pain.
Studies of pregabalin for the treatment of central neuropathic pain have been limited to double-blind trials of 4-17 weeks in duration. The purpose of this study was to assess the long-term safety and tolerability of pregabalin in Japanese patients with central neuropathic pain. The efficacy of pregabalin was also assessed as a secondary measure. ⋯ These findings demonstrate that pregabalin is generally well tolerated and provides sustained efficacy over a 53-week treatment period in patients with chronic central neuropathic pain.
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Journal of pain research · Jan 2014
Scientometric assessment of drugs for chronic pain, 1979-2013: rapid growth of publications, paucity of successful drugs.
The aim of this study was to find signs of progress in the pharmacotherapy of chronic pain over the past 35 years using scientometric analysis. The following scientometric indices were used: 1) popularity index, representing the share of articles on a specific drug(s) relative to all articles in the field of chronic pain; 2) index of change, representing the degree of growth in publications on a topic from one period to the next; 3) index of expectations, representing the ratio of the number of articles on a topic in the top 20 journals relative to the number of articles in all (>5,000) biomedical journals covered by PubMed; and 4) index of ultimate success, representing a publication outcome when a new drug takes the place of a common drug previously used for the same purpose. Publications on 55 drugs used in the treatment of chronic pain were assessed during seven 5-year periods, from 1979 to 2013. ⋯ None of the drugs had a high index of expectations in 2009-2013. The index of ultimate success was positive only with triptans in the relatively limited area of acute treatment of migraine. As a result, despite rapid growth in the number of publications, our scientometric analysis did not reveal signs of substantial progress in the field of pharmacotherapy for chronic pain.
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Journal of pain research · Jan 2014
Differences in pain perception during open muscle biopsy and Bergstroem needle muscle biopsy.
Open surgical muscle biopsy (OB) and percutaneous Bergstroem needle muscle biopsy (NB) are equally accepted procedures. However, there are no data comparing intraprocedural pain for both techniques. We designed this prospective trial to test the hypothesis that the less invasive NB causes less intraprocedural pain than OB. ⋯ Our results do not support the hypothesis that intraprocedural pain in NB is less than in OB. When informing the patient about both types of muscle biopsies, the amount of intraprocedural pain should not serve as a differentiating characteristic.
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Journal of pain research · Jan 2014
Conditioned pain modulation is minimally influenced by cognitive evaluation or imagery of the conditioning stimulus.
Conditioned pain modulation (CPM) is an experimental approach for probing endogenous analgesia by which one painful stimulus (the conditioning stimulus) may inhibit the perceived pain of a subsequent stimulus (the test stimulus). Animal studies suggest that CPM is mediated by a spino-bulbo-spinal loop using objective measures such as neuronal firing. In humans, pain ratings are often used as the end point. Because pain self-reports are subject to cognitive influences, we tested whether cognitive factors would impact on CPM results in healthy humans. ⋯ Our results suggest that CPM is primarily dependent on sensory input, and that the cortical processes of evaluation and imagery have little impact on CPM. These findings lend support for CPM as a useful tool for probing endogenous analgesia through subcortical mechanisms.