Articles: pain-measurement.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Feb 2018
Huntington Mice Demonstrate Diminished Pain Response in Inflammatory Pain Model.
Huntington disease (HD) affects the nervous system and leads to mental and motor dysfunction. Previous studies have shown that HD is caused by the exon 1 region of the huntingtin (HTT) gene having expanded CAG trinucleotide repeats. However, few studies have focused on the relationship between HD and pain. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between HD and pain response. ⋯ Our data demonstrate less pain behavior and pain-related cytokine response at the spinal cord level for HD mice compared to those for WT mice. Further studies are needed for determining the mechanism as to how mutant HTT leads to altered pain behavior and pain-related cytokine response.
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Humans require the ability to discriminate intensities of noxious stimuli to avoid future harm. This discrimination process seems to be biased by an individual's attention to pain and involves modulation of the relative intensity differences between stimuli (ie, Weber fraction). Here, we ask whether attention networks in the brain modulate the discrimination process and investigate the neural correlates reflecting the Weber fraction for pain intensity. ⋯ Of note, this vigilance-related functional coupling specifically predicted participants' behavioral ability to differentiate pain intensities. Moreover, unique to pain discrimination tasks, the response in the right superior frontal gyrus linearly represented the Weber fraction for pain intensity, which significantly biased participants' pain discriminability. These findings suggest that pain intensity discrimination in humans relies on vigilance-related enhancement in the parieto-thalamic attention network, thereby allowing the prefrontal cortex to estimate the relative intensity differences between noxious stimuli.
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Review Meta Analysis
Pressure pain thresholds over the cranio-cervical region in headache: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Sensitivity of tissues can be measured by algometry. Decreased pressure pain thresholds over the cranio-cervical area are supposed to reflect signs of sensitization of the trigemino-cervical nucleus caudalis. A systematic review was conducted to assess the current scientific literature describing pressure pain threshold (PPT) values over the cranio-cervical region in patients with migraine, tension-type headache (TTH), and cervicogenic headache (CeH). ⋯ The trapezius muscle (midpoint between vertebrae C7 and acromion) was the most frequently targeted site and showed significantly lower PPT values in adults with migraine (pooled standardized mean difference kPa: 1.26 [95%CI -1.71, -0.81]) and chronic TTH (pooled standardized mean difference kPa: -2.00 [95%CI -2.93, -1.08]). Most studies found no association between PPT values and headache characteristics such as frequency, duration or intensity. Further standardization of PPT measurement in the cranio-cervical region is recommended.
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The Numerical Rating Scale (NRS), Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), Verbal Rating Scale (VRS), and Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-R) are valid measures of pain intensity. However, ratings on these measures may be influenced by factors other than pain intensity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of non-pain intensity factors on the pain intensity scales. ⋯ The influence of pain interference and pain unpleasantness on VRS and FPS-R, respectively should be kept in mind when selecting pain measures and interpreting the results of research studies using these scales.