Often invisible to medical tests, McGill University researchers are explaining why chronic pain is generally discounted.
In a new study, they are showing that it can be better assessed when doctors take a holistic approach. The researchers said that they were able to create a fuller picture of chronic pain by combining biological data with information about patients’ mental health, sleep and stress.
“Biological data tells us what’s wrong, but not how something feels,” said lead author Etienne Vachon-Presseau, a member of McGill’s Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain and an associate professor in the Faculty of Dental Medicine and Oral Health Sciences.
“Sleep problems, stress and mood can all influence how the brain processes pain, shaping how severe it feels and how much it interferes with daily life,” he added.
Related:
The researchers said that their findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, stand to improve how the condition is diagnosed and treated.
“Chronic pain affects one in five adults, yet because it often doesn’t appear on blood tests or scans, many people are dismissed or left without answers,” they said in a press release.
The team used machine learning to analyze data from more than 500,000 people in the United Kingdom. They explained that their models could accurately identify medical conditions linked to chronic pain, such as arthritis or gout.
However, they could not predict how much pain a person reported feeling.
“When mental health, sleep and stress data were added, the models’ performance improved significantly, capturing both a person’s physical condition and experience of pain,” they said. “The novel approach could help doctors choose treatments that target the source of pain and address the psychological and emotional struggles that may be making it worse.”
The authors added that their findings also help validate the experiences of patients living with a condition that is notoriously difficult to diagnose.
“Our research shows that pain can be detected and understood when we look at the whole person,” said Vachon-Presseau. “Patients, health-care providers and policymakers will benefit by adopting a more holistic approach to assessing chronic pain.”
