A latest research on the causes of chronic pain (that lasts more than six months) indicates that it may be genetic.
The study, which will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Philadelphia (USA), delves into that people who suffer from chronic pain usually have a combination of symptoms such as: headache and back pain in a persistent way and even chronic fatigue syndrome, endometriosis or fibromyalgia, among other conditions.
To arrive at the genetic linkage for chronic pain, the researchers asked 2,721 chronic pain patients to rate the intensity of their pain from 0 to 10 . After this, they divided the study participants into three groups according to their pain levels: low, medium and high, where the moderate pain group was the most abundant with 46% of the cases . The group with high perception of pain accounted for 45%. Finally, the group with little pain sensation only represented 9%.
After performing a genetic analysis on all study participants, the results showed that a variant of the DRD1 gene (dopamine receptor) was 33% more frequent in the low pain sensation group than in the high pain sensation group. In addition, people in the moderate pain group were more likely to have enzymes (COMT) that limited the release of dopamine . At the same time, the high pain group was 25% more likely to have the DRD2 gene than the moderate pain group.
“Our study is very important as it provides an objective way of understanding pain and why different people have different levels of pain tolerance ,” says study author Tobore Onojjighofia.
