2026/01/01 by Kathleen A. Martin Ginis, Gabriel U. Dix, Cameron M. Gee +10 · 1 voice
Medicine · Psychology · #Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions #Pain Mechanisms and Treatments #Spinal Cord Injury Research
paper · doi:10.46292/sci25-00033
openalex publication_date 2026/01/01 · openalex created_date 2026/03/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Objectives: To compare measures of pain intensity, pain interference, use of pain-coping strategies, conditioned pain modulation, inflammation, and subjective and social well-being in adults with spinal cord injury (SCI) and chronic neuropathic (NP) versus chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) pain. Methods: A natural groups, cross-sectional study design was used, with analyses of baseline data from the Exercise and Pain in Chronic Spinal Cord Injury (EPIC-SCI) trial (NCT04160858). The International Spinal Cord Injury Pain Basic Data Set (version 2.0) was administered during an interview to 35 men and 11 women with chronic SCI ( M age 50.6, SD 14.1; M years post injury 16.5, SD 12.8). Participants completed standardized questionnaire measures of pain, pain coping, subjective well-being, and social well-being, provided a blood sample, and underwent conditioned pain modulation testing. Participants were grouped according to their primary pain problem: NP or MSK. Results: Participants whose primary pain problem was NP reported significantly greater pain intensity and pain-coping strategy use and showed more pain modulation and a different pattern of subjective well-being measures compared to participants with an MSK primary pain problem ( P s < .05). Differences in overall bodily pain and proinflammatory cytokine concentrations were medium to large, and differences in pain interference and social well-being were small and not statistically significant ( P s > .11). Conclusion: This is the first study to compare a comprehensive set of biopsychosocial variables across pain phenotypes in adults with chronic SCI. The results contribute to a deeper understanding of SCI pain phenotypes and their characteristics.