ArticleBMC medicine2016
Contact heat sensitivity and reports of unpleasantness in communicative people with mild to moderate cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's disease: a cross-sectional study.
Article in BMC medicine, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Experimentally evoked pain in Alzheimer's disease.Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners · 2021Pooled it
- Multidimensional Pain Assessment Tools for Ambulatory and Inpatient Nursing Practice.Pain management nursing : official journal of the American Society of Pain Management Nurses · 2020Pooled it
- Clinical and radiomic features for predicting the treatment response of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in major neurocognitive disorder: Results from a randomized controlled trial.Human brain mapping · 2022Trial
- Multi-regional transcriptomic analysis reveals early nociceptive and neuroinflammatory alterations in APP/PS1 mice.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Article
- Combined and synergistic effects of heat and fine particulate matter on hospitalization among patients with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2025Article
- Daily Household Electricity Consumption in Community-Dwelling Older Individuals With Cognitive Impairment: Prospective Cohort Study.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- A conceptual model for assessing the risk of unidentified pain.The journal of pain · 2025Article
- Mechanisms of comorbidity between Alzheimer's disease and pain.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Review
- Mild cognitive impairment and postsurgical pain in older adults: A call for research.Journal of clinical anesthesia · 2025Article
- Immune receptors and aging brain.Bioscience reports · 2024Review
- Sex and Sleep Disruption as Contributing Factors in Alzheimer's Disease.Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2024Review
- Psychophysics of Pain: A Methodological Introduction.Pain management nursing : official journal of the American Society of Pain Management Nurses · 2023Article
- Galectin-3 activates spinal microglia to induce inflammatory nociception in wild type but not in mice modelling Alzheimer's disease.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Increased Heat Pain Tolerance but Hyperalgesia to Tonic Inflammatory Pain in the CRND8 Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease.Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2023Article
- A Cross-Sectional Study of Pain Sensitivity and Unpleasantness in People with Vascular Dementia.Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.) · 2022Article
- Treating the most vulnerable: A discursive review of experimental pain in Alzheimer's disease.Nursing open · 2022Review
- Increased pain unpleasantness and pain-related fMRI activation in the periaqueductal gray in Alzheimer's disease.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Narrative Review of Sensory Changes as a Biomarker for Alzheimer's Disease.Biological research for nursing · 2021Review
- Policy Implications for Pain in Advanced Alzheimer's Disease.Pain management nursing : official journal of the American Society of Pain Management Nurses · 2021Article
- Pain Management in Home Health Care: Relationship With Dementia and Facility Admissions.Pain management nursing : official journal of the American Society of Pain Management Nurses · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundCompared to healthy controls, people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) have been shown to receive less pain medication and report pain less frequently. It is unknown if these findings reflect less perceived pain in AD, an inability to recognize pain, or an inability to communicate pain.
methodsTo further examine aspects of pain processing in AD, we conducted a cross-sectional study of sex-matched adults ≥65 years old with and without AD (AD: n = 40, female = 20, median age = 75; control: n = 40, female = 20, median age = 70) to compare the psychophysical response to contact-evoked perceptual heat thresholds of warmth, mild pain, and moderate pain, and self-reported unpleasantness for each percept.
resultsWhen compared to controls, participants with AD required higher temperatures to report sensing warmth (Cohen's d = 0.64, p = 0.002), mild pain (Cohen's d = 0.51, p = 0.016), and moderate pain (Cohen's d = 0.45, p = 0.043). Conversely, there were no significant between-group differences in unpleasantness ratings (p > 0.05).
conclusionsThe between-group findings demonstrate that when compared to controls, people with AD are less sensitive to the detection of thermal pain but do not differ in affective response to the unpleasant aspects of thermal pain. These findings suggest that people with AD may experience greater levels of pain and potentially greater levels of tissue or organ damage prior to identifying and reporting injury. This finding may help to explain the decreased frequency of pain reports and consequently a lower administration of analgesics in AD.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.