WASHINGTON - Different people experience pain in ways as individual as their own fingerprints, according to researchers documenting a study designed to give doctors greater insight into pain treatment.
Researchers studied how people responded to the same form of pain - a 20-minute injection of high-concentration salt water into the jaw
muscle that mimics the painful chronic condition known as temporomandibular joint disorder.
They found wide variations in the intensity of the brain's "anti-pain response."
"This may help explain why some people are more sensitive or less sensitive than others when it comes to painful sensations," said Dr Jon-Kar Zubieta, assistant professor of psychiatry and radiology at University of Michigan Medical School and lead author of the study.
"Such variability in the pain-response system may help explain why some people react to pain and pain medications differently," he said. "It may also be quite relevant to why some people, and not others, develop chronic pain conditions."
The study used a sophisticated scanning technique to analyse how chemical signals in the brain, known as endorphins, match up with receptors on the surface of brain cells and reduce or block the spread of pain messages from the body .
The researchers said they hoped the findings would improve the understanding of pain and ways to treat it, especially as the United States population ages and more people grapple with arthritis and other conditions that inflict chronic pain.
- REUTERS
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