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Search results for: chronic pain

Social Media May Reduce Depression Risk for Older People with Pain

Cheryl Platzman Weinstock  |  

(Reuters Health)—Online socializing may weaken the tie between pain and depression for older people, a U.S. study suggests. People in chronic pain are at risk of depression to start with. When pain makes them stay home more, interacting with friends and family less, it only adds to this risk, the researchers write in the Journals…

Chikungunya Fever May Trigger Chronic Articular Symptoms

David Douglas  |  

NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—More than half of those infected by the mosquito-borne Chikungunya virus will go on to experience chronic articular pain or arthritis, according to Brazilian researchers. Chikungunya—meaning “to become contorted” in the Makonde language—was first described during an outbreak in Africa in the 1950s. Many outbreaks have since occurred in Africa, Asia and…

Anxiety, Depression May Help Predict Outcome of Low Back Pain Treatment

Lorraine L. Janeczko  |  

NEW YORK (New York)—Patients with anxiety and depression may be less satisfied than other patients with their chronic low back pain (CLBP) treatments, new research suggests. “Patients with anxiety/depression symptoms experienced more pain severity and more pain-related functional, social, and emotional disability, and they were less satisfied with care, compared with the other groups,” the…

Pfizer-Lilly Pain Drug Meets Late-Stage Trial Goals

Manas Mishra  |  

(Reuters)—An experimental osteoarthritis drug developed by Pfizer Inc and Eli Lilly and Co achieved its main goal of lowering pain in a late stage trial, the companies said on Wednesday, potentially offering a safer alternative to opioids. Opioid abuse has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and drugmakers have been looking for less addictive…

Don’t Rule Out Placebos for Osteoarthritis Pain Control

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CHICAGO—The placebo effect in treating pain in osteoarthritis (OA) should not be discounted, an expert said at the ACR State-of-the-Art Clinical Sym­posium in April. It’s especially important to accept the effect as real considering that trials of pain therapies in OA generate such high placebo effects (typically at least 40%) and that OA treatment options,…

Anticonvulsants Unhelpful for Low Back Pain

Marilynn Larkin  |  

NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Solid evidence suggests that anticonvulsants provide no benefit for low back or lumbar radicular pain and a high risk of harm, researchers say. “We started the study because these drugs were increasingly being used for low back pain and radiating leg pain, without the support of strong evidence of effectiveness,” principal investigator…

Pain Links Fibromyalgia & RA

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Many patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) report pain despite excellent control of inflammation with immunotherapies. Variable degrees of coexisting fibromyalgia (FM) may explain this disparity. RA patients who have the highest 2011 ACR FM survey criteria scores appear to share neurobiologic features consistently observed in FM patients. This study is the first to provide neuroimaging evidence that RA is a mixed pain state, with many patients’ symptoms being related to the central nervous system rather than to classic inflammatory mechanisms…

Spine Surgery May not Be Needed to Ease Back Pain from Osteoporosis

Lisa Rapaport  |  

(Reuters Health)—Patients with acute pain from osteoporosis damage to the spine don’t experience any more relief from surgery to inject cement into cracked or broken vertebrae than they would with a sham procedure, a recent trial in The Netherlands suggests. All of the patients in the experiment had compression fractures, which can happen when osteoporosis…