Articles: chronic-pain.
-
Front Behav Neurosci · Jan 2015
Contingency Awareness Shapes Acquisition and Extinction of Emotional Responses in a Conditioning Model of Pain-Related Fear.
As a fundamental learning process, fear conditioning promotes the formation of associations between predictive cues and biologically significant signals. In its application to pain, conditioning may provide important insight into mechanisms underlying pain-related fear, although knowledge especially in interoceptive pain paradigms remains scarce. Furthermore, while the influence of contingency awareness on excitatory learning is subject of ongoing debate, its role in pain-related acquisition is poorly understood and essentially unknown regarding extinction as inhibitory learning. ⋯ Our findings underscore specific roles of learned danger and safety in pain-related acquisition and extinction. Contingency accuracy appears to distinctly impact learned emotional responses to safety and danger cues, supporting aversive learning to occur independently from CS-US awareness. The interplay of cognitive and emotional factors in shaping excitatory and inhibitory pain-related learning may contribute to altered pain processing, underscoring its clinical relevance in chronic pain.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
Prematurity, Opioid Exposure and Neonatal Pain: Do They Affect the Developing Brain?
Traditionally, 10 years ago, children born preterm often routinely received morphine, especially during mechanical ventilation. Studies in neonatal rats, whose stage of brain development roughly corresponds to that of children born preterm, found negative long-term effects after pain and opioid exposure. ⋯ Although prematurity, opioid exposure and neonatal pain were significantly associated with brain volume, no major associations with neuropsychological functioning or thermal sensitivity were detected. Our findings suggest that morphine administration during neonatal life does not affect neurocognitive performance or thermal sensitivity during childhood in children born preterm without brain damage during early life. Future studies with larger sample sizes are needed to confirm these findings.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
Effect of intraoperative infiltration with local anesthesia on the development of chronic pain after inguinal hernia repair: a randomized, triple-blinded, placebo-controlled trial.
Chronic pain is a common complication after inguinal hernia repair. The objective of this randomized trial was to assess the effect of intraoperative infiltration with local anesthetic versus placebo on the development of chronic pain after inguinal hernia repair. ⋯ We did not find any evidence that intraoperative infiltration of local anesthetic had an impact on the development of chronic postoperative pain.
-
Comparative Study
Prevalence comparisons of somatic and psychiatric symptoms between community nonpatients without pain, acute pain patients, and chronic pain patients.
Somatic/psychiatric symptoms are frequently found in chronic pain patients (CPPs). The objectives of this study were to determine 1) which somatic/psychiatric symptoms are more commonly found in acute pain patients (APPs) and CPPs vs community nonpatients without pain (CNPWPs) and 2) if somatic/psychiatric symptom prevalence differs between APPs and CPPs. ⋯ CPPs are characterized to a significantly greater extent than comparison groups by somatic/psychiatric symptoms that are highly intercorrelated. This has implications for clinical practice and future research.
-
Clinical Trial
Assessment of pain intensity in clinical trials: individual ratings vs composite scores.
To evaluate the reliability of findings suggesting that composite scores made up of just two ratings of recalled pain may be adequately reliable and valid for assessing outcome in pain clinical trials. ⋯ The findings provide additional evidence that two-item composite scores may be adequate for assessing the primary outcome of pain intensity in chronic pain clinical trials. Additional research is needed to further establish the generalizability of these findings.