Similarities in stress physiology among patients with chronic pain and headache disorders: evidence for a common pathophysiological mechanism?
Open Access
- 29 March 2008
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in The Journal of Headache and Pain
- Vol. 9 (3), 165-175
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10194-008-0029-7
Abstract
One common feature of chronic musculoskeletal pain and headaches are that they are both influenced by stress. Among these, tension-type headache (TTH), fibromyalgia (FMS) and chronic shoulder/neck pain (SNP) appear to have several similarities, both with regard to pathophysiology, clinical features and demographics. The main hypothesis of the present study was that patients with chronic pain (TTH, FMS and SNP) had stress-induced features distinguishing them from migraine patients and healthy controls. We measured pain, blood pressure, heart rate (HR) and skin blood flow (BF) during (1 h) and after (30 min) controlled low-grade cognitive stressor in 22 migraine patients, 18 TTH patients, 23 FMS patients, 29 SNP patients and 44 healthy controls. FMS patients had a lower early HR response to stress than migraine patients, but no differences were found among FMS, TTH and SNP patients. Finger skin BF decreased more in FMS patients compared to migraine patients, both during and after the test. When comparing chronic pain patients (chronic TTH, FMS and SNP) with those with episodic pain (episodic TTH and migraine patients) or little or no pain (healthy controls), different adaptation profiles were found during the test for systolic and diastolic blood pressure, HR and skin BF in the chronic group. In conclusion, these results suggest that TTH, FMS and SNP patients may share common pathophysiological mechanisms regarding the physiological responses to and recovery from low-grade cognitive stress, differentiating them from episodic pain conditions such as migraineKeywords
This publication has 69 references indexed in Scilit:
- Autonomic and muscular responses and recovery to one-hour laboratory mental stress in healthy subjectsBMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, 2007
- Cardiovascular responses to cognitive stress in patients with migraine and tension-type headacheBMC Neurology, 2007
- Noradrenaline and cortisol changes in response to low-grade cognitive stress differ in migraine and tension-type headacheThe Journal of Headache and Pain, 2007
- Tension-type headache and fibromyalgia: what?s common, what?s different?Neurological Sciences, 2004
- Are psychosocial factors, risk factors for symptoms and signs of the shoulder, elbow, or hand/wrist?: A review of the epidemiological literatureAmerican Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2002
- The prevalence and characteristics of fibromyalgia in the general populationArthritis & Rheumatism, 1995
- The effect of motivation on shoulder-muscle tension in attention-demanding tasksErgonomics, 1994
- Stress and the IndividualArchives of Internal Medicine, 1993
- The american college of rheumatology 1990 criteria for the classification of fibromyalgiaArthritis & Rheumatism, 1990
- Generation of muscle tension additional to postural muscle loadErgonomics, 1987