Jan Vollert, Christoph Maier, Nadine Attal, David L H Bennett, Didier Bouhassira, Elena K Enax-Krumova, Nanna B Finnerup, Rainer Freynhagen, Janne Gierthmühlen, Maija Haanpää, Per Hansson, Philipp Hüllemann, Troels S Jensen, Walter Magerl, Juan D Ramirez, Andrew S C Rice, Sigrid Schuh-Hofer, Märta Segerdahl, Jordi Serra, Pallai R Shillo, Soeren Sindrup, Solomon Tesfaye, Andreas C Themistocleous, Thomas R Tölle, Rolf-Detlef Treede, Ralf Baron
In a recent cluster analysis, it has been shown that patients with peripheral neuropathic pain can be grouped into 3 sensory phenotypes based on quantitative sensory testing profiles, which are mainly characterized by either sensory loss, intact sensory function and mild thermal hyperalgesia and/or allodynia, or loss of thermal detection and mild mechanical hyperalgesia and/or allodynia. Here, we present an algorithm for allocation of individual patients to these subgroups. The algorithm is nondeterministic-ie, a patient can be sorted to more than one phenotype-and can separate patients with neuropathic pain from healthy subjects (sensitivity: 78%, specificity: 94%)...
August 2017: Pain