Department of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
Eur J Pain. 2012 Mar;16(3):401-9. doi: 10.1002/j.1532-2149.2011.00023.x. Epub 2011 Dec 19.
Habituation and sensitization are important behavioural responses to repeated exposure of painful stimuli. Whereas within-session response dynamics to nociceptive stimuli is well characterized, little is known about long-term behaviour due to repetitive nociceptive stimulation. We used a standardized longitudinal heat pain paradigm in 66 healthy participants, 21 patients with chronic low back pain and 22 patients with depression who received daily sessions of 60 suprathreshold heat stimuli (48 °C each) for eight consecutive days. All three groups showed the same response: Repeated painful stimulation over several days resulted in substantially decreased pain ratings to identical painful stimuli. The decreased perception of pain over time was associated with a very robust increase in pain ratings in each single pain session, i.e., all participants sensitized within sessions and habituated between sessions. This uniform pattern was equally present in all examined groups. Chronic pain and depression do not seem to interfere with short-term sensitization and long-term habituation in this model of repetitive phasic heat pain.
习惯化和敏感化是对重复疼痛刺激的重要行为反应。虽然对伤害性刺激的单次治疗过程中的反应动力学已有很好的描述，但由于重复的伤害性刺激，对长期行为知之甚少。我们使用标准化的纵向热痛范式，对 66 名健康参与者、21 名慢性腰痛患者和 22 名抑郁症患者进行了研究，他们在连续 8 天内每天接受 60 次超阈值热刺激（每次 48°C）。所有三组均表现出相同的反应：数天的重复疼痛刺激导致对相同疼痛刺激的疼痛评分显著降低。随着时间的推移，疼痛感知的降低与每个单次疼痛治疗中疼痛评分的非常显著增加相关，即所有参与者在单次治疗中均敏感化，在治疗之间则习惯化。在所有被检查的组中，这种一致的模式都同样存在。在这种重复的阶段性热痛模型中，慢性疼痛和抑郁症似乎并不干扰短期敏感化和长期习惯化。
