Bäckryd E. Pain in the Blood? Envisioning Mechanism-Based Diagnoses and Biomarkers in Clinical Pain Medicine.
Diagnostics (Basel) 2015;
5:84-95. [PMID:
26854144 PMCID:
PMC4665549 DOI:
10.3390/diagnostics5010084]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2014] [Revised: 03/08/2015] [Accepted: 03/09/2015] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Chronic pain is highly prevalent, and pain medicine lacks objective biomarkers to guide diagnosis and choice of treatment. The current U.S. “opioid epidemic” is a reminder of the paucity of effective and safe treatment options. Traditional pain diagnoses according to the International Classification of Diseases are often unspecific, and analgesics are often prescribed on a trial-and-error basis. In contrast to this current state of affairs, the vision of future mechanism-based diagnoses of chronic pain conditions is presented in this non-technical paper, focusing on the need for biomarkers and the theoretical complexity of the task. Pain is and will remain a subjective experience, and as such is not objectively measurable. Therefore, the concept of “noci-marker” is presented as an alternative to “pain biomarker”, the goal being to find objective, measurable correlates of the pathophysiological processes involved in different chronic pain conditions. This vision entails a call for more translational pain research in order to bridge the gap between clinical pain medicine and preclinical science.
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