Experimental Pain Thresholds Influenced by Sex of Experimenter

Gijsbers, K.; Nicholson, Fiona

doi:10.2466/pms.101.3.803-807

Cited by 79 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…We enrolled only female patients and probands in the study to create a study group as homogenous as possible and to avoid effects influenced by the gender. Moreover, it has been shown that gender of both the experimenter and the subjects has a major impact on the subjective pain thresholds [39]. Nevertheless, using only female subjects might be a limitation of our study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Contact heat evoked potentials and habituation measured interictally in migraineurs

et al. 2015

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BackgroundA lack of habituation of different evoked potential modalities in migraine patients in-between attacks has been suggested.MethodsThis study investigates cortical response after painful stimuli evaluated by contact heat evoked potentials (CHEPs) and quantitative sensory testing (QST) during the migraine-free interval. We enrolled 22 migraine patients and 22 healthy subjects.ResultsCortical potentials after contact heat stimulation of the cheeks and the volar forearm at a temperature of 51°C showed significantly reduced A-δ-amplitudes in patients and healthy controls. When the subjects’ attention was drawn to an arithmetic task, a partial lack of habituation of amplitude could be seen in migraine patients. QST did not show any difference between migraineurs and controls.ConclusionOur findings can be primarily deemed to demonstrate that patients and healthy controls show significantly lower amplitudes while performing the calculation task. Without performing the calculation task we could not show the expected lack of habituation in migraineurs. Yet, while performing the calculation task our results partly suggest that hypothesis.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Contact heat evoked potentials and habituation measured interictally in migraineurs

et al. 2015

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“…For example, women have a higher tendency to seek medical care than men 26 , and patients may report different pain levels based on the gender of the physician evaluating them. 8, 12, 19 We also used only the first pain measurement recorded during an encounter to avoid potential bias introduced by physician-prescribed analgesic treatment, but in most cases, we had limited knowledge concerning the use of over-the-counter pain relievers prior to the encounter. Nevertheless, we believe that working with large-scale human data from a broad population is extremely valuable for corroborating the findings of previous studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, the effects of a patient’s mood and lack of personal coping strategies, such as a tendency to catastrophize, have been well-studied. 12, 19, 35 …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Differences in Reported Pain Across 11,000 Patients Captured in Electronic Medical Records

Ruau

Liu

Clark

et al. 2012

The Journal of Pain

212

136

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Clinically recorded pain scores are abundant in patient health records but are rarely used in research. The use of this information could help improve clinical outcomes. For example, a recent report by the Institute of Medicine stated that ineffective use of clinical information contributes to under-treatment of patient subpopulations — especially women. This study used diagnosis-associated pain scores from a large hospital database to document sex differences in reported pain. We used de-identified electronic medical records from Stanford Hospital and Clinics for more than 72,000 patients. Each record contained at least one disease-associated pain score. We found over 160,000 pain scores in more than 250 primary diagnoses, and analyzed differences in disease-specific pain reported by men and women. After filtering for diagnoses with minimum encounter numbers, we found diagnosis-specific sex differences in reported pain. The most significant differences occurred in patients with disorders of the musculoskeletal, circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems, followed by infectious diseases, and injury and poisoning. We also discovered sex-specific differences in pain intensity in previously unreported diseases, including disorders of the cervical region, and acute sinusitis (p = 0.01, 0.017, respectively). Pain scores were collected during hospital encounters. No information about the use of pre-encounter over-the-counter medications was available. To our knowledge, this is the largest data-driven study documenting sex differences of disease-associated pain. It highlights the utility of EMR data to corroborate and expand on results of smaller clinical studies. Our findings emphasize the need for future research examining the mechanisms underlying differences in pain.

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“…[14] In case of cross-over studies it is important to maintain the same investigator in all the pain assessments, as the gender and appearance of the investigator can influence the pain rating of the volunteers. [15] The sensitivity of a given experimental model for detecting analgesia is affected by the method used to measure this pain. Hence, good sensitivity of a model is obtained by using a pain assessment method that is reliable in producing data with modest variance (noise).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A simple cold pressure technique for the evaluation of analgesic drugs in healthy subjects

et al. 2012

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Aim:An experimental pain model which is sensitive and reproducible would be a useful pharmacological tool both for existing and new drugs. The aim of the present study was to establish a simple and reliable method of producing experimental pain which can be used for screening of analgesic agents.Materials and Methods:The method was standardized by recording pain threshold and pain tolerance values in 24 healthy volunteers. Reproducibility of the test procedure was evaluated by recording the pain threshold and pain tolerance values by a single observer on two sessions (inter-day reproducibility), and second observer in one session (inter-observer reproducibility), separately. Validity of the model was further tested by evaluating the analgesic effect of tramadol in 12 healthy volunteers.Results:Cold pain model was found to produce low variability with coefficient of variation less than 15%. Inter-observer and inter-day reproducibility was very good as shown by Bland – Altman plot with most of the values within ± 2SD. Analgesic activity by Tramadol was statistically different from placebo (P < 0.05).Conclusion:The newly developed pain model offers a stable and sensitive method for the early assessment of analgesic activity.

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Experimental Pain Thresholds Influenced by Sex of Experimenter

Cited by 79 publications

References 10 publications

Contact heat evoked potentials and habituation measured interictally in migraineurs

Contact heat evoked potentials and habituation measured interictally in migraineurs

Sex Differences in Reported Pain Across 11,000 Patients Captured in Electronic Medical Records

A simple cold pressure technique for the evaluation of analgesic drugs in healthy subjects

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