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Among its many other issues, chronic pain makes daily living harder. Those with chronic pain—whether from migraine, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, or something else—may not be able to explain why they can’t attend a barbeque, or clean, or read to a child. A woman with lupus, writer Christine...
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A $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will be used to research chronic musculoskeletal pain treatments. Due to worker disability and lost wages, this type of condition, which leads to pain in bones, ligaments, muscles, nerves, and tendons, costs the United States $500 billion...
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In a study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY annual meeting, the concerns of postsurgery opioid use, and the groups most at risk, were highlighted. For patients using opioids for the first time for pain management after surgery, certain groups—people who smoke, those who suffer from depression, and...
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The PAINWeek National Conference has presented many courses teaching the benefits of music therapy. A university in Thailand is promoting a music therapy course, and not just to treat those in pain. Music therapy has helped lower blood pressure, soothe patients during dialysis or chemotherapy, or...
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What are the rates of fatigue, anxiety, depression, and pain after a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS)? Does symptom severity change after a year? A new article published in the Multiple Sclerosis Journal studied the occurrences of symptoms in the year post an MS diagnosis. Via self-reports at 6...
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In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, 135 people diagnosed with chronic migraine—aged 10 to 17 years, mostly female (79%) and mostly white (89%)—were assessed. Researchers sought to understand “predictors of improvement in headache days and migraine-related...
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The journal of Nature Biomedical Engineering features an article highlighting a blueprint to study pain and potential treatments. Because pain is unpredictable and random, it can be hard to study. Scientists have developed a prototype closed-loop brain–machine interface that “can modulate sensory...
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Which screening and diagnostic tests are ordered for a new patient with potential musculoskeletal pain? That’s the question posed in an article published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. Researchers looked at almost 12,000 initial medical encounters over 9 years that had a...
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Findings from the 2002 to 2018 National Health Interview Survey for adults aged 25 to 84 are discouraging. Pain prevalence—for headache/migraine, joint, low back, neck, facial/jaw pain—has gone up, with people reporting a 10% increase of pain in at least 1 area. That equals an additional 10.5...
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An article in JAMA Network Open asked, “Do 5 sessions of flotation restricted environmental stimulation therapy [REST] alleviate chronic pain?” Participants floated in a tank of high salt concentrated water heated to skin temperature. Exposure to stimuli—thermal, visual, acoustic, and mechanical—was...