Martínez-González Agustín E, Cervin Matti, Piqueras José A, Infante-Cañete Lidia, Pérez-Sánchez Susana
Department of Developmental Psychology and Didactics, University of Alicante, Carretera San Vicente del Raspeig, s/n, 03690 San Vicente del Raspeig, Spain.
Department of Clinical Sciences Lund, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden.
Children (Basel). 2024 Dec 23;11(12):1562. doi: 10.3390/children11121562.
Recent studies indicate the need to examine how the gut microbiota-brain axis is implicated in pain, sensory reactivity and gastro-intestinal symptoms in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but no scale exists that assesses all these constructs simultaneously.
We created a pool of 100 items based on the real-world experience of autistic people, and a multidisciplinary team and stakeholders reduced this pool to 50 items assessing pain, sensory hypersensitivity, and sensory hyposensitivity. In the present study, we present this new assessment tool, the Pain and Sensitivity Reactivity Scale (PSRS), and examine its psychometric properties in a sample of 270 individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; mean age = 9.44, SD = 4.97), of which almost half (45%) had intellectual disability (ID).
A factorial model of three factors (pain, hyporeactivity, and hyperreactivity) and five specific factors for sensory hypo- and hyperreactivity, respectively, fitted the data well. Good to excellent internal consistency and adequate test-retest reliability was found for most PSRS scales. Sound psychometric properties were found in individuals with and without ID. Correlations with other measures of sensory sensitivity and pain indicated sound convergent validity.
PSRS shows promise as a reliable measure to analyze pain and sensory reactivity in autistic people regardless of whether they have ID or not. The measure overcomes several limitations of previous assessment tools and includes variables that are important for the understanding of the gut microbiota-brain axis in ASD.
近期研究表明，有必要研究肠道微生物群-脑轴如何与自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中的疼痛、感觉反应性和胃肠道症状相关，但目前尚无能够同时评估所有这些结构的量表。
我们根据自闭症患者的实际生活经验编制了一个包含100个条目的题库，一个多学科团队和利益相关者将该题库缩减至50个条目，用于评估疼痛、感觉过敏和感觉减退。在本研究中，我们展示了这种新的评估工具——疼痛与敏感性反应量表（PSRS），并在270名自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者样本中检验了其心理测量特性（平均年龄 = 9.44，标准差 = 4.97），其中近一半（45%）有智力障碍（ID）。
一个由三个因素（疼痛、反应减退和反应亢进）以及分别针对感觉减退和感觉亢进的五个特定因素组成的因子模型与数据拟合良好。大多数PSRS量表的内部一致性良好至优秀，重测信度充足。在有和没有智力障碍的个体中均发现了良好的心理测量特性。与其他感觉敏感性和疼痛测量指标的相关性表明具有良好的聚合效度。
无论自闭症患者是否有智力障碍，PSRS都有望成为一种可靠的工具，用于分析他们的疼痛和感觉反应性。该测量方法克服了先前评估工具的几个局限性，并纳入了对理解ASD中肠道微生物群-脑轴很重要的变量。
