Lautenbacher S, Strian F
Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Department of Neurology, Munich, Germany.
Electromyogr Clin Neurophysiol. 1993 Mar;33(2):113-8.
To try to replicate our earlier findings of body size influences in somatosensory testing we measured thresholds of heat pain, warmth, cold and vibration in 66 young, normal-weight women. Our assumption was that true body measure effects have to be demonstrable even in a sample limited with regard to age and sex and without extreme body size variation (which may be linked to pathology). In the present sample, body size (a linear combination of height and weight) did not have a very strong relation with any of the somatosensory thresholds (slightly stronger for the warmth and cold thresholds than for the heat pain and vibration thresholds). Hence, we could not fully replicate our earlier findings of marked body size effects on warmth and cold thresholds obtained in a sample without such limits. A measure of the body fat content seemed to have some explanatory power, but only for the vibration thresholds. We conclude that body measures, age and sex may be confounded in a way that cannot always be sorted out by a posteriori analyses and should therefore be treated a priori as independent variables for purposes such as establishing normal values in somatosensory testing.
为了尝试重现我们之前在体感测试中关于体型影响的研究结果，我们对66名年轻、体重正常的女性测量了热痛、温热、冷觉和振动的阈值。我们的假设是，即使在一个年龄和性别受限且没有极端体型差异（这可能与病理状况有关）的样本中，真实的身体测量效应也必须是可证明的。在当前样本中，体型（身高和体重的线性组合）与任何体感阈值的关系都不是很强（温热和冷觉阈值的关系略强于热痛和振动阈值）。因此，我们无法完全重现我们之前在一个没有此类限制的样本中获得的关于体型对温热和冷觉阈值有显著影响的研究结果。身体脂肪含量的一项测量似乎有一些解释力，但仅针对振动阈值。我们得出结论，身体测量、年龄和性别可能以一种无法总是通过事后分析理清的方式相互混淆，因此，为了诸如在体感测试中确定正常值等目的，应将它们作为先验的独立变量来对待。
