Department of Psychophysiological Psychology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany.
Pain Med. 2012 Apr;13 Suppl 2:S44-50. doi: 10.1111/j.1526-4637.2012.01326.x.
The present review summarizes experimental data on age-related changes in pain processing. These data suggest an increase in pain threshold and a decrease in tolerance threshold, which both are dependent on the physical nature of the stressor, as well as a developing deficiency in endogenous pain inhibition, which might be paralleled by an enhanced disposition to central sensitization (stronger temporal summation). These findings are arranged in a model that allows for explaining the two seemingly divergent perspectives: age both dulls the pain sense and increases the prevalence of pain complaints. This model is based on the assumption that both excitatory and inhibitory processes are dampened with age but that the later processes age at a faster rate, leading to increasingly unbalanced pain excitation.
本综述总结了与年龄相关的疼痛处理变化的实验数据。这些数据表明疼痛阈值增加和耐受阈值降低，这两者都取决于应激源的物理性质，以及内源性疼痛抑制的发展缺陷，这可能与中枢敏化（更强的时间总和）的增强倾向相平行。这些发现被安排在一个模型中，可以解释两个看似不同的观点：年龄既使疼痛感觉迟钝，又增加疼痛主诉的发生率。该模型基于这样的假设，即兴奋性和抑制性过程都随着年龄的增长而减弱，但后期过程的衰减速度更快，导致疼痛兴奋越来越不平衡。
