Endogenous Analgesia: Methodological Aspects and Clinical Application

A special issue of Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425). This special issue belongs to the section "Neuroscience of Pain".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 January 2022) | Viewed by 4165

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Neurology, University Hospital Bergmannsheil gGmbH, Ruhr-University of Bochum, 44789 Bochum, Germany
Interests: somatosensory system; mechanism-based pain treatment; sensory testing; chronic pain; neuropathic pain

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Guest Editor
1. Department of Neuroscience, Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù, Rome, Italy
2.The Faculty of Medicine, Department of Health Science and Technology, Center for Sensory-Motor Interaction, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Interests: headache; migraine; children; pain
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the present Special Issue, we aim to exploit different aspects of the assessment of endogenous analgesia. Various descending control mechanisms modulate the spinal cord responses to afferent noxious inputs. In this issue, we aim to discuss the different neuronal pathways and their pharmacology, and to point out changes in descending controls in different clinical conditions, including the potential implications in terms of mechanism-based treatment. Studies on the opposing descending facilitatory systems are also welcome. The audience of such an issue is intended to include both pre-clinical and clinical researchers, with the aim to establish links between the findings of basic science and their clinical applications.

Prof. Dr. Elena Enax-Krumova
Prof. Dr. Massimiliano Valeriani
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • Endogenous analgesia
  • descending pain inhibition
  • descending facilitatory system
  • mechanism-based pain treatment

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

10 pages, 663 KiB  
Article
The Contribution of Psychological Factors to Inter-Individual Variability in Conditioned Pain Modulation Is Limited in Young Healthy Subjects
by Philipp Graeff, Regina Stacheneder, Laura Alt and Ruth Ruscheweyh
Brain Sci. 2022, 12(5), 623; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/brainsci12050623 - 10 May 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1467
Abstract
Conditioned pain modulation (CPM) describes the decrease in pain perception of a test stimulus (TS) when presented together with a heterotopic painful conditioning stimulus (CS). Inter-individual differences in CPM are large and have been suggested to reflect differences in endogenous pain modulation. In [...] Read more.
Conditioned pain modulation (CPM) describes the decrease in pain perception of a test stimulus (TS) when presented together with a heterotopic painful conditioning stimulus (CS). Inter-individual differences in CPM are large and have been suggested to reflect differences in endogenous pain modulation. In a previous analysis, we demonstrated that in young, healthy participants, inter-individual differences account for about one-third of CPM variance, with age and sex together explaining only 1%. Here, we investigated if psychological factors explain significant amounts of inter-individual variance in CPM. Using the same dataset as before, we performed both cross-sectional (n = 126) and repeated measures (n = 52, 118 observations) analysis and the corresponding variance decompositions, using results of psychological questionnaires assessing depression, trait anxiety and pain catastrophizing. Psychological factors did not significantly predict CPM magnitude, neither directly nor when interactions with the CPM paradigm were assessed; however, the interaction between depression and the paradigm approached significance. Variance decomposition showed that the interaction between depression and the CPM paradigm explained an appreciable amount of variance (3.0%), but this proportion seems small when compared to the residual inter-individual differences (35.4%). The main effects of the psychological factors and the interactions of anxiety or catastrophizing with the CPM paradigm are explained at <0.1% each. These results show that the contribution of psychological factors to inter-individual CPM differences in healthy participants is limited and that the large inter-individual variability in the CPM effect remains largely unexplained. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Endogenous Analgesia: Methodological Aspects and Clinical Application)
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13 pages, 850 KiB  
Article
Inter-Individual Differences Explain More Variance in Conditioned Pain Modulation Than Age, Sex and Conditioning Stimulus Intensity Combined
by Philipp Graeff, Alina Itter, Katharina Wach and Ruth Ruscheweyh
Brain Sci. 2021, 11(9), 1186; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/brainsci11091186 - 09 Sep 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 1955
Abstract
Conditioned pain modulation (CPM) describes the reduction in pain evoked by a test stimulus (TS) when presented together with a heterotopic painful conditioning stimulus (CS). CPM has been proposed to reflect inter-individual differences in endogenous pain modulation, which may predict susceptibility for acute [...] Read more.
Conditioned pain modulation (CPM) describes the reduction in pain evoked by a test stimulus (TS) when presented together with a heterotopic painful conditioning stimulus (CS). CPM has been proposed to reflect inter-individual differences in endogenous pain modulation, which may predict susceptibility for acute and chronic pain. Here, we aimed to estimate the relative variance in CPM explained by inter-individual differences compared to age, sex, and CS physical and pain intensity. We constructed linear and mixed effect models on pooled data from 171 participants of several studies, of which 97 had repeated measures. Cross-sectional analyses showed no significant effect of age, sex or CS intensity. Repeated measures analyses revealed a significant effect of CS physical intensity (p = 0.002) but not CS pain intensity (p = 0.159). Variance decomposition showed that inter-individual differences accounted for 24% to 34% of the variance in CPM while age, sex, and CS intensity together explained <3% to 12%. In conclusion, the variance in CPM explained by inter-individual differences largely exceeds that of commonly considered factors such as age, sex and CS intensity. This may explain why predictive capability of these factors has had conflicting results and suggests that future models investigating them should account for inter-individual differences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Endogenous Analgesia: Methodological Aspects and Clinical Application)
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