Quick Discrimination of Adelta and C Fiber Mediated Pain Based on Three Verbal Descriptors

Florian Beissner, Amadeus Brandau, Christian Henke, Lisa Felden, Ulf Baumgärtner, Rolf-Detlef Treede, Bruno G Oertel and Jörn Lötsch

PLOS ONE, 2010, vol. 5, issue 9, 1-7

Abstract: Background: Aδ and C fibers are the major pain-conducting nerve fibers, activate only partly the same brain areas, and are differently involved in pain syndromes. Whether a stimulus excites predominantly Aδ or C fibers is a commonly asked question in basic pain research but a quick test was lacking so far. Methodology/Principal Findings: Of 77 verbal descriptors of pain sensations, “pricking”, “dull” and “pressing” distinguished best (95% cases correctly) between Aδ fiber mediated (punctate pressure produced by means of von Frey hairs) and C fiber mediated (blunt pressure) pain, applied to healthy volunteers in experiment 1. The sensation was assigned to Aδ fibers when “pricking” but neither “dull” nor “pressing” were chosen, and to C fibers when the sum of the selections of “dull” or “pressing” was greater than that of the selection of “pricking”. In experiment 2, with an independent cohort, the three-descriptor questionnaire achieved sensitivity and specificity above 0.95 for distinguishing fiber preferential non-mechanical induced pain (laser heat, exciting Aδ fibers, and 5-Hz electric stimulation, exciting C fibers). Conclusion: A three-item verbal rating test using the words “pricking”, “dull”, and “pressing” may provide sufficient information to characterize a pain sensation evoked by a physical stimulus as transmitted via Aδ or via C fibers. It meets the criteria of a screening test by being easy to administer, taking little time, being comfortable in handling, and inexpensive while providing high specificity for relevant information.

Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0012944 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 12944&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0012944

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012944

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().