Quantitative sensory testing

OBJECTIVE: The current study aimed to identify distinctive functional brain connectivity characteristics that differentiate patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS) from those with primary insomnia. METHODS: Quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) was employed to analyze connectivity matrices using the phaselocking value technique. A total of 107 patients with RLS (RLS group) and 17 patients with insomnia without RLS (primary insomnia group) were included in the study...

PURPOSE: To assess the impact of endoscope-assisted fractured roots or fragments extraction within the mandibular canal, along with quantitative sensory testing (QST) alterations in the inferior alveolar nerve (IAN). METHODS: Six patients with lower lip numbness following mandibular third molar extraction were selected. All patients had broken roots or fragments within the mandibular canal that were extracted under real-time endoscopic assistance. Follow-up assessments were conducted on postoperative days 1, 7, and 35, including a standardized QST of the lower lip skin...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Lipedema is a widespread severe chronic disease affecting mostly women. Characterized by painful bilateral fat accumulation in extremities sparing hands and feet, objective measurement-based diagnosis is currently missing. We tested for characteristic psychometric and/or sensory alterations including pain and for their potential for medical routine diagnosis. METHODS: Pain psychometry was assessed using the German Pain Questionnaire...

Central sensitization (CS) involves an amplification of neural processing within the central nervous system that can result in widespread pain patterns and hypersensitivity to stimuli. The Central Sensitization Inventory (CSI) and various quantitative sensory testing (QST) methods purport to assess clinical markers of CS. The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to summarize and quantify the associations between total CSI scores and QST measures from previous studies. A systematic search identified 39 unique studies that were deemed eligible for the systematic review and 33 studies for meta-analyses (with 3314 subjects and 154 effect sizes), including five QST modalities: conditioned pain modulation, temporal summation, pressure pain threshold, heat pain threshold, and cold pain threshold...

In this joint guideline of the scientific societies and working groups mentioned in the title, evidence-based recommendations for the use of screening questionnaires and diagnostic tests in patients with neuropathic pain were developed. The systematic literature search and meta-analysis yielded the following results: Of the screening questionnaires, Douleur Neuropathique en 4 Questions (DN4), I‑DN4 (self-administered DN4), and Leeds Assessment of Neuropathic Symptoms and Signs (LANSS) received a strong recommendation, while S‑LANSS (self-administered LANSS) and PainDETECT received weak recommendations for their use in the diagnostic workup of patients with possible neuropathic pain...

BACKGROUND: Pressure injuries are one of the most challenging secondary conditions for individuals with spinal cord injuries and related disorders (SCI/D) owing to inherent, lifelong risk factors that include a lack of sensory and motor function below the level of injury and reliance on a wheelchair for daily mobility, resulting in prolonged periods of sitting. Although many factors contribute to the development of pressure injuries, the pressure between the skin and a surface is always a factor and the development of injury is dependent on the magnitude and duration of the pressure...

Quantitative sensory testing (QST) refers to a group of noninvasive psychophysical tests that examine responses to a range of calibrated mechanical and thermal stimuli. Quantitative sensory testing has been used extensively in adult pain research and has more recently been applied to pediatric pain research. The aims of this scoping review were to map the current state of the field, to identify gaps in the literature, and to inform directions for future research. Comprehensive searches were run in 5 databases...

Alcohol overconsumption is well known to cause damage to the peripheral nervous system, affecting both small and large nerve fibers. The aim of this descriptive study was to investigate peripheral nerve damage, and to correlate clinical, epidemiological and neurophysiological findings, in patients diagnosed with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). Ninety alcohol-dependent subjects on inpatient basis were enrolled in this prospective study over a 3-year period. Every subject was assessed by the Neuropathy Symptoms Score (NSS) questionnaire and the Neuropathy Impairment Score (NIS) clinical examination grading scale, followed by Nerve Conduction Studies, Quantitative Sensory Testing and Sympathetic Skin Response (SSR) testing...

PURPOSE: To compare the effects of multi-sensory stimuli on relaxation and sleep quality in 2 periods. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This experimental research used a sample group of 60 individuals, divided into three groups, with each group consisting of 20 participants. The test period was divided into two equal periods of 4 days each. The collected data included measurements of relaxation (visually calibrated scale, percentage stress, and heart rate) and sleep quality (percentage sleep, total sleep duration, and duration of deep sleep)...

The origin of flight and laryngeal echolocation in bats is likely to have been accompanied by evolutionary changes in other aspects of their sensory biology. Of all sensory modalities in bats, olfaction is perhaps the least well understood. Olfactory receptors (ORs) function in recognizing odour molecules, with crucial roles in evaluating food, as well as in processing social information. Here we compare OR repertoire sizes across taxa and apply a new pipeline that integrates comparative genome data with protein structure modelling and then we employ molecular docking techniques with small molecules to analyse OR functionality based on binding energies...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) impairs sensory-motor functions, with debilitating consequences on postural control and balance, which persist during the chronic stages of recovery. The Timed Up and Go (TUG) test is a reliable, safe, time-efficient, and one of the most widely used clinical measures to assess gait, balance, and fall risk in TBI patients and is extensively used in inpatient and outpatient settings. Although the TUG test has been used extensively due to its ease of performance and excellent reliability, limited research has been published that investigates the relationship between TUG performance and quantitative biomechanical measures of balance...

Hair defined as curly has an elliptical cross sectional area and unique 3D form. While the chemical, morphological and mechanical characteristics of such hair are being explored using a range of analytical techniques, hair assembly (head of hair) characteristics and individual behaviour are difficult to determine via tress-based instrumental and sensory testing. Since the demand for more efficacious and personalized products is expected to gain pace, this project sets the groundwork for developing a taxonomy for exploring and classifying curly hair needs from an individual's perspective...

Pain and opioid use disorder (OUD) are inextricably linked, as the former can be a risk factor for the development of the latter, and over a third of persons with OUD suffer concomitant chronic pain. Assessing pain among people with OUD is challenging, because ongoing opioid use brings changes in pain responses and most pain assessment tools have not been validated for this population. In this narrative review, we discuss the fundamentals of pain assessment for populations with OUD. First, we describe the biological, psychological and social aspects of the pain experience among people with OUD, as well as how opioid-related phenomena may contribute to the pain experience in this population...

BACKGROUND: Free nipple grafting makes sensory recovery challenging. Permanent decreased sensation to touch and temperature in skin-grafted skin is common. Direct neurotization of the nipple-areolar complex (NAC) graft has been described. However, quantitative data regarding degree of nipple reinnervation possible is unknown. This study aims to quantify and qualify sensation recovery following nerve coaptation to reinnervate the NAC. METHODS: Patients undergoing mastectomy for gender dysphoria from 2020 to 2022 were offered nerve allograft to restore nipple sensation...

Rodents and human studies indicate that the hippocampus, a brain region necessary for memory processing, responds to noxious stimuli. However, the hippocampus has yet to be considered a key brain region directly involved in the human pain experience. One approach to answer this question is to perform quantitative sensory testing on patients with hippocampal damage-ie, medial temporal lobe epilepsy. Some case studies and case series have performed such tests in a handful of patients with various types of epilepsy and have reported mixed results...

OBJECTIVE: Patients with chronic pain disorders, including Temporomandibular Disorders (TMDs) endorse high levels of sleep disturbances, frequently reporting reduced sleep quality. Despite this, little is known about the effect that daytime pain has on the microstructure and macro-architecture of sleep. Therefore, we aimed to examine the extent to which daytime pain sensitivity, measured using quantitative sensory testing (QST), is associated with objective sleep parameters the following night, including sleep architecture and power spectral density, in women with TMD...

INTRODUCTION: Binge eating disorder (BED) is a psychiatric illness related to a high frequency of episodes of binge eating, loss of control, body image dissatisfaction, and suffering caused by overeating. It is estimated that 30% of patients with BED are affected by obesity. "Mindful eating" (ME) is a promising new eating technique that can improve self-control and good food choices, helping to increase awareness about the triggers of binge eating episodes and intuitive eating training...

BACKGROUND: The Divided or Single Exposure (DOSE) trial is a double-blind, placebo-controlled examination of once versus split dosing of methadone for comorbid pain and opioid use disorder (OUD) among persons receiving methadone for OUD treatment. METHODS: This multisite trial consists of a 12-week active intervention phase and 6-month follow-up period. Persons receiving methadone who endorse clinically-significant chronic pain are randomized into once-daily dosing or split dosing that is managed remotely via an electronic pillbox...

With the advent of distributed multi-sensory networks of devices, vast troves of real-time data can be gathered about our interactions with the built environment. These rich data sets can be mined to achieve improved and informed data-driven designs of buildings, neighborhoods, and potentially entire cities. Among those, integrated developments have the peculiarity of combining multiple functions within a compact space and, as such, behave as microcosms of a city that can help address the problem of urban sprawl and density...

This study investigated the sensory nerve function in people with different subtypes of Parkinson's disease (PD), which included the tremor-dominant (TD) group (n = 30), postural instability and gait disorder (PIGD) group (n = 33), and healthy-controls (HC) group (n = 33). Sural nerve's current perception threshold (CPT) and pain tolerance threshold (PTT) in both feet were measured at different frequencies. Results were evaluated using the mini-mental state examination (MMSE), Hoehn Yahr scale (H-Y), and 3-meter timed-up-and-go-test (TUGT)...