Chronic pain linked to increased risk of dementia

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Chronic pain linked to increased risk of dementia in study of older adults – Medical News Today – June 2017

This study gives us good reason to demand effective treatment for our pain.

Treat us for our pain now or for our dementia later.

Allowing a patient to remain in pain causes real physical and cognitive damage.

Opioid restrictions are hazardous to patients’ health

Researchers at UC San Francisco have found that older people with persistent pain show quicker declines in memory as they age and are more likely to have dementia years later, an indication that chronic pain could somehow be related to changes in the brain that contribute to dementia.

The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, appears to be the first to make this association.

The researchers analyzed data from 10,000 participants aged 60 and up over a 12-year period.

Those participants who said they were persistently troubled by moderate or severe pain in both 1998 and 2000 declined 9.2 percent faster in tests of memory function over the next 10 years than those who said they were not troubled by pain.

The patients who complained about persistent pain also had a small but significantly increased likelihood of developing dementia overall.

Researchers found that the additional amount of memory decline in those who reported persistent pain suggested that these patients would likely have had a harder time with tasks of daily living, such as independently managing their medications and finances.

The research, conducted in collaboration with members of UCSF’s Division of Geriatrics, suggests three potentially overlapping reasons for the association between chronic pain and dementia.

  1. An increased dementia risk could be caused by painkillers, such as opioids [or NSAIDs], which people are taking in greater numbers.
  2. It could also be that the experience of pain somehow compromises the brain’s ability to encode memories and other cognitive functions.
  3. Finally, it could be due to some other factor that was not measured in the study, and therefore could not be analyzed. But even if this is the case,

Whitlock said, the findings remain clinically relevant, because pain could be used as a marker for increased risk of future cognitive decline even if the biological basis of the association is still unclear.

The data that the researchers analyzed – an ongoing national study of older Americans called the Health and Retirement Study – did not include information about opioid use, so they could not tell which of their participants were taking the drugs.

While opioid use could be the cause of the cognitive changes they observed, Whitlock said, so could the pain itself.

For example, a recent study of chronic pain sufferers found that those who took nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as ibuprofen, had nearly the same increased dementia risk as those taking opioids

“This means we have to consider the potential direct effects of chronic pain on cognition,” she said.

People who suffer from chronic pain tend to have diminished attentional capacity and impaired memory, and Whitlock said that particularly when pain is severe or causes patients to ruminate, it could divert enough attention to interfere with the consolidation of memory.

Another possibility, she said, is that the emotional stress of being in pain activates stress-hormone pathways in the body that have been implicated in cognitive decline.

If either is the case, she said, then effectively treating the pain could protect cognition.

Doctors often struggle to manage their patients’ pain, since current therapies, in addition to being addictive, do not always work. But Whitlock said that even those patients who continue to suffer, and may be experiencing a more rapid cognitive decline as a result, can still be helped with assistive devices, physical and occupational therapy, or strategies, such as mindfulness techniques, that are aimed at increasing self-efficacy and curbing the emotional impact of chronic pain.

Reference Article:
Association Between Persistent Pain and Memory Decline and Dementia in a Longitudinal Cohort of Elders,
Elizabeth L. Whitlock, MD, MSc et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.1622, published online 5 June 2017.

2 thoughts on “Chronic pain linked to increased risk of dementia”

  1. IKathy C

    Thanks Zyp!
    One more Article to depress us all. Of course the Pain Interferes in every kind of Activity. I am no longer Socially active, ever since the awful Rhetoric about Pain and Opiates, I avoid any situation where I would have to leave early or explain anything. Up until a couple of years ago I was under the delusion, that there would be a fix or a surgery to clean up the other ones, not anymore. I thought that even a 20% reduction might have allowed my to work part time and engage in life again, that was really stupid. At the last surgical Consult the Neurosurgeon would not even acknowledge that the implant in my neck existed, or the previous Surgery. He told me to see a Chiropractor, something I am not quite stupid or desperate enough to do.
    The awful and misleading Corporate Media rhetoric was suddenly addressed by the Associated press, and they even mentioned people with chronic Pain, and the difference between Addiction, and Dependence.
    Here is a Link:
    https://undark.org/article/associated-press-stylebook-addiction/?utm_content=buffer466fe&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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  2. Pingback: Recommended by Red: Bodily Damage from Uncontrolled Chronic Pain - Face Facts

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