Katie Eder

Despite rampant opioid misuse, abuse, and diversion self-reported by chronic pain patients in a study presented at the American Pain Society 33rd Annual Scientific Meeting, primary care providers tended to downgrade the patients' risk for engaging in those drug-related aberrant behaviors, indicating a gap between physicians' objective risk assessment for opioid abuse and the actual extent of the problem.

Among adult patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), pain severity can impact performance on cognitive tests, suggesting that pain independently contributes to impaired brain function in MS.

Medical and nursing schools that reported extensively incorporating the topic of pain care into prelicensure curricula do not offer more robust pain management education programs than those indicating minimal or moderate pain course integration.

Patients who are hospitalized for pain related to acute pancreatitis pose unique challenges for achieving adequate analgesia, which is particularly true for those admitted with preexisting chronic pain and prior opioid use.

Though constipation as a side effect of opioid therapy is generally considered a tolerability issue that can be treated with over-the-counter laxatives, opioid-induced constipation may still lead to serious gastrointestinal complications.

Although the concept of delivering chronic pain care through multidisciplinary clinics is less than half a century old, John Loeser, MD, believes the model has already surpassed its peak in the United States, mainly due to financial reasons.

With the co-occurrence of chronic pain and cancer amassing from improved cancer survival rates, it is increasingly important for healthcare professionals to understand how the conditions interrelate and influence patients' quality of life.

Expanding upon previous investigations of the associations among low vitamin D levels, chronic pain, and poor sleep within the general and non-pain populations, a research poster presented at the American Pain Society 33rd Annual Scientific Meeting suggests correcting inadequate vitamin D levels in middle-aged to older patients with knee osteoarthritis may reduce their clinical pain and improve sleep quality.

Although the benefit of Botox (onabotulinumtoxinA) for preventing headaches in adults with chronic migraine has been extensively established in clinical trials, limited data exists on the injections' effectiveness for the indication beyond 5 treatment cycles.

Citing interim results that met parameters for efficacy in reducing cardiovascular mortality, an independent group of experts has put an early stop to a late-stage study on Novartis's novel oral medication for chronic heart failure.

As long-term cancer survival rates continue to surge, an increasing percentage of patients with cancer-related pain are progressing to the chronic pain arena, which necessitates more contemporary treatment approaches to cancer pain management.

Although they have all participated in the development of treatment guidelines for a variety of pain conditions, 3 comprehensive pain experts openly acknowledged and discussed the practical limitations of published evidence-based recommendations during the closing session of the American Academy of Pain Medicine 2014 Annual Meeting.

Reducing high-dose opioid therapy does not worsen pain severity, functional ability, or aberrant drug-related behaviors in chronic pain patients when concurrent biopsychosocial services are offered.

Sometimes, chronic pain patients intentionally magnify or downplay their physical and mental symptoms during office visits. Despite that fact, little attention in the clinical setting is paid to underlying motives for positively or negatively biased self-reports.

Even if a chronic pain patient had been taking opioid medications exactly as prescribed, it would still be possible for the patient to experience negative cognitive and emotional responses to dose tapering that could amplify sensory pain and lead to opioid addiction.

In light of the fact that many physicians continue to rely on observational analysis and patient self-reporting to monitor opioid addiction or misuse, results from a scientific poster reinforced the benefits of routine urine drug testing in improving compliance with prescribed opioid medications and ultimately enhancing pain care.

Though different sets of treatment recommendations for knee osteoarthritis send conflicting messages to practicing physicians, James W. Atchison, DO, pointed out that the guidelines focus solely on the knee, while pain management specialists focus on the whole person.

Preliminary research data revealed a significantly higher incidence of opioid-induced constipation among patients taking opioid analgesics for chronic non-cancer pain than self-reported constipation complaints suggest.

Although fibromyalgia lacks an effective standardized treatment, one part of the problem is the condition's diverse constellation of symptoms that include chronic widespread pain, fatigue, and even depression.

Revisit the articles from each medical specialty that attracted the most eyeballs in 2013.

An experimental combination treatment for central neuropathic pain (CNP) in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients failed to show superiority to placebo in a phase 2 study.

Regulating testosterone (T) levels in men with hypogonadism for up to 5 years results in sustained reductions in body weight and waist circumference.

In addition to treating episodes of major depression, Brintellix (vortioxentine) has demonstrated superiority to placebo on measures of cognitive function in adult patients with major depressive disorder (MDD).

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Xiaflex (collagenase clostridium histolyticum) as the first non-surgical treatment for Peyronie's disease.

Although change in knee joint space narrowing depicted on radiographs is considered the gold standard for monitoring osteoarthritis progression and knee cartilage volume loss, the method doesn't account for extrusion of the medial meniscus, which new research suggests can better predict radiographic osteoarthritis change over time.

During their "Great Debate" keynote session of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) 2013 Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA, two leading rheumatologists took direct aim at each other's significant clinical trial data to provide rationale for choosing biologics over triple therapy - or vice versa - as the treatment of choice for rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Though rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients have a significantly higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) compared to the general population, results from a pair of studies show that the biologic disease modifier Actemra (tocilizumab) may actually improve the cardiovascular (CV) profiles of RA patients.

Although rheumatologists have an array of disease measurement tools to choose from, they generally choose to ignore all of them when they're assessing rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients.

As a follow-up to the initial establishment of Simponi (golimumab)'s safety and efficacy in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), researchers presented final 5-year data evaluating the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blocker's effects in RA patients taking methotrexate and those naïve to the biologic agent.

Though previous reports have described a link between vitamin D deficiency and an increased risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) development, a trio of studies has now offered clinical support to the contrary belief.