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medpundit |
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Monday, November 22, 2004For this study, the researchers compared the brains of 26 volunteers who had been suffering from back pain for more than a year with those of 26 people without back pain. They found that the decrease in gray matter volume was directly linked to the length of time the patient had been in pain. Hard to tell what the clinical significance of this is, except that this comment was interesting: "Chronic pain patients, and specifically chronic back pain patients, seem to have impairment in emotional decision making," Dr. Apkarian said. The study doesn't mention if their subjects used any drugs or if they did, what types of drugs, to try to control their pain. Were all of the chronic back pain sufferers also chronic narcotic users? If so, couldn't that have had an effect on brain volume, just as alcohol does? posted by Sydney on 11/22/2004 08:36:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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