Chronic Pain may increase risk of dying early

London, June 7: Middle-aged adults suffering from severe pain persistently that interferes with daily life may be at an increased risk of dying early, a study has shown.

Chronic pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage.

The study showed that individuals who were often troubled with pain had a 29 percent increased risk of dying early, and those who reported "quite a bit" and "extreme" pain interference respectively had 38 per cent and 88 per cent increased risks.

"Our study sheds new light by showing that it is not the pain itself that increases the risk of death but the amount of disruption of everyday living linked to having long-term pain," said Ross Wilkie from the Keele University in Britain.

For the study, published in the journal Arthritis Care & Research, the team included 6,324 participants from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and 10,985 participants from the North Staffordshire Osteoarthritis Project. The adults were aged 50 years.

Additional studies are needed to determine the mechanisms through which disabling pain may increase the risk of premature death, the researchers said.

According to a recent study, people who suffer from chronic pain tend to have diminished attention capacity and impaired memory and were also at risk of dementia.

Pain that continues, day in and day out, may trigger an unexpected and unwanted side effect -- a bigger risk of mental decline and dementia, a new study suggests.

The findings suggest that chronic pain may be related to changes in the brain that contribute to memory problems. The findings may also point to new ways to protect age-related mental decline, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) researchers said.

The study included information on more than 10,000 people. All of the study participants were 60 and older.

Those who had moderate or severe chronic pain in both 1998 and 2000 had more than a 9 percent faster decline on memory tests over the next 10 years than those who didn't have pain.

The decrease in memory would likely be enough to affect people's ability to do things such as manage their finances or keep track of their medications, the researchers said.

Patients with chronic pain also had a small but significantly increased risk of developing dementia, the study found.

"Elderly people need to maintain their cognition to stay independent. Up to one in three older people suffer from chronic pain, so understanding the relationship between pain and cognitive decline is an important first step toward finding ways to help this population," study first author Dr. Elizabeth Whitlock, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of anesthesia and perioperative care, said in a UCSF news release.