Why sickness hurts: A central mechanism for pain induced by peripheral inflammation

摘要

Low-grade systemic inflammation has been implicated in chronic pain, as well as in comorbid diseases like depression and fatigue. We have previously shown that women's pain perception and regulation is more affected by systemic inflammation than that of men. Here we investigated the neural substrates underlying these effects using an fMRI paradigm previously employed in a clinical population. Fiftyone participants (29 women) were injected with 0.6 ng/kg lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or saline to induce a peripheral inflammatory response.