Published in
BioMed Central, Arthritis Research and Therapy, 3(11), 2009
DOI: 10.1186/ar2684
Elsevier, Journal of Pain, 4(10), p. S13
DOI: 10.1016/j.jpain.2009.01.058
Links
- ORCID
- BioMed Central | PDF
- Elsevier
- [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov] | PDF
- [arthritis-research.com] | PDF
- [europepmc.org] | PDF
- [www.researchgate.net] | PDF
- [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov] | PDF
- [dash.harvard.edu] | PDF
- [arthritis-research.biomedcentral.com] | PDF
- [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov] | PDF
Tools
Enhanced reactivity to pain in patients with rheumatoid arthritis
,
Clifton O. Bingham,
Joan Bathon,
Jennifer A. Haythornthwaite,
Michael T. Smith,
Gayle G. Page
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Abstract
Abstract Introduction Maladaptive physiological responses to stress appear to play a role in chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, relatively little stress research in RA patients has involved the study of pain, the most commonly reported and most impairing stressor in RA. In the present study, we compared psychophysical and physiological responses to standardized noxious stimulation in 19 RA patients and 21 healthy controls. Methods Participants underwent a single psychophysical testing session in which responses to a variety of painful stimuli were recorded, and blood samples were taken at multiple time points to evaluate the reactivity of cortisol, interleukin-6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) to the experience of acute pain. Results The findings suggest that RA patients display a fairly general hyperalgesia to mechanical and thermal stimuli across several body sites. In addition, while serum cortisol levels did not differ at baseline or following pain testing in patients relative to controls, the RA patients tended to show elevations in serum IL-6 and demonstrated enhanced pain-reactivity of serum levels of TNF-α compared with the healthy controls ( P