AI Article Synopsis

  • Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) is a chronic pain disorder linked to heightened pain perception and mental distress, often influenced by pain catastrophizing, which includes feelings of helplessness and overemphasizing pain.
  • A study involving 21 CRPS patients and 49 healthy controls used resting-state fMRI to analyze whole-brain functional connectivity differences and their relationship with pain catastrophizing.
  • Results indicated CRPS patients had increased connectivity in somatosensory areas suggesting intensified pain perception, while lower connectivity in certain brain networks was associated with cognitive and emotional difficulties in processing pain, both linked to higher pain catastrophizing levels.

Article Abstract

Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a chronic neuropathic pain disorder. Pain catastrophizing, characterized by magnification, rumination, and helplessness, increases perceived pain intensity and mental distress in CRPS patients. As functional connectivity patterns in CRPS remain largely unknown, we aimed to investigate functional connectivity alterations in CRPS patients and their association with pain catastrophizing using a whole-brain analysis approach. Twenty-one patients with CRPS and 49 healthy controls were included in the study for clinical assessment and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Between-group differences in whole-brain functional connectivity were examined through a Network-based Statistics analysis. Associations between altered functional connectivity and the extent of pain catastrophizing were also assessed in CRPS patients. Relative to healthy controls, CRPS patients showed higher levels of functional connectivity in the bilateral somatosensory subnetworks (components 1~2), but lower functional connectivity within the prefronto-posterior cingulate (component 3), prefrontal (component 4), prefronto-parietal (component 5), and thalamo-anterior cingulate (component 6) subnetworks (p<0.05, family-wise error corrected). Higher levels of functional connectivity in components 1~2 (β=0.45, p=0.04) and lower levels of functional connectivity in components 3~6 (β=-0.49, p=0.047) were significantly correlated with higher levels of pain catastrophizing in CRPS patients. Higher functional connectivity in the somatosensory subnetworks implicating exaggerated pain perception and lower functional connectivity in the prefronto-parieto-cingulo-thalamic subnetworks indicating impaired cognitive-affective pain processing may underlie pain catastrophizing in CRPS.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10175954PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.5607/en23003DOI Listing

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