Pain Clinic, Division of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, Rudolf Magus Institute of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
J Pain. 2012 May;13(5):507-15. doi: 10.1016/j.jpain.2012.02.011.
Patients with fibromyalgia frequently report cognitive complaints. In this study we examined performance on 2 cognitive inhibition tests, the Stroop Color-Word Test (SCWT) and the Multi-Source Interference Test (MSIT), in 35 female patients with fibromyalgia and 35 age-matched healthy female controls. Experimental pressure pain thresholds (PPT) were determined, and fibromyalgia patients rated their current pain on a visual analog scale and completed the pain and fatigue subscales of the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire. Further, all subjects completed questionnaires assessing symptoms of pain catastrophizing, depression, and anxiety. Significant group differences were found for SCWT and MSIT performance in both the neutral (N) and interference (I) conditions with slower reaction times in patients versus controls. However, no significant group differences were found for the difference (I-N) or proportion (I/N) scores, or on the number of errors made. For patients, pain experienced during PPT correlated significantly to several indices of cognition. Psychosocial variables were not related to cognitive test performance. Fibromyalgia patients performed worse on both tests but to a similar extent for the neutral condition and the interference condition, indicating that there is no specific problem in cognitive inhibition. Evidence of decreased mental processing and/or psychomotor speed was found in patients with fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia patients performed worse on interference tests, but no specific problem in cognitive inhibition was found. Decreased reaction time performance may instead point to an underlying problem of psychomotor or mental processing speed in fibromyalgia. Future studies should examine potential deficits in psychomotor function in fibromyalgia patients in more detail.
纤维肌痛患者常报告认知问题。在这项研究中，我们检查了 35 名纤维肌痛女性患者和 35 名年龄匹配的健康女性对照者在 2 项认知抑制测试中的表现，即斯特鲁普颜色-词测试（SCWT）和多源干扰测试（MSIT）。测定了实验性压力疼痛阈值（PPT），纤维肌痛患者在视觉模拟评分上评估当前疼痛，并完成纤维肌痛影响问卷的疼痛和疲劳子量表。此外，所有受试者完成了评估疼痛灾难化、抑郁和焦虑症状的问卷。在中性（N）和干扰（I）条件下，SCWT 和 MSIT 表现均存在显著的组间差异，患者的反应时间比对照组慢。然而，在差异（I-N）或比例（I/N）评分或错误数方面，没有发现显著的组间差异。对于患者，在 PPT 期间经历的疼痛与认知的几个指标显著相关。心理社会变量与认知测试表现无关。纤维肌痛患者在两项测试中的表现均较差，但在中性条件和干扰条件下的表现相似，表明认知抑制没有特定问题。在纤维肌痛患者中发现了认知加工和/或心理运动速度下降的证据。
纤维肌痛患者在干扰测试中表现较差，但未发现认知抑制存在特定问题。反应时间表现下降可能表明纤维肌痛患者存在潜在的心理运动或认知加工速度问题。未来的研究应该更详细地检查纤维肌痛患者潜在的心理运动功能缺陷。
