Pain assessment

“Please tell me, on this chart, your pain level from 1 to 10 cartoon faces.”  Hippocrates could have done better than that, but pain truly is individualized and complex.  Now, a psychiatrist and colleagues at Indiana University have discovered 60 blood biomarkers that reveal a spectrum of pain levels. “Comparing blood samples taken during visits when patients reported experiencing low or high pain, the team identified 60 genes whose RNA levels varied with pain severity. Expression levels of a subset of those genes, the researchers found, successfully predicted pain intensity and future pain-related emergency room visits among some study subjects.”   MORE

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