SynthesisPain2019
Alexithymia in individuals with chronic pain and its relation to pain intensity, physical interference, depression, and anxiety: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Pain, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
70 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 145 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review on the effects of group singing on persistent pain in people with long-term health conditions.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2020Pooled it
- Wearable Respiratory Monitoring and Feedback for Chronic Pain in Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer: A Feasibility Randomized Controlled Trial From the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study.JCO clinical cancer informatics · 2020Trial
- Temporal pathways between alexithymia, psychological distress, and pain: An autoregressive mediation analysis.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2026Article
- Alert to Hurt: Threat Appraisal Mediates the Association Between Attachment Anxiety and Perceptions of Pain Burden Among Healthy Young Adults.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Psychological Profiling and Quantitative Sensory Testing Parameters as Predictors of Experimental Induced Muscle Pain.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Article
- A Cross-Neurotype Analysis of Camouflaging and Illness Perceptions in People with Central Sensitivity Syndromes.Autism in adulthood · 2026Article
- Impact of chronic pain on the families of U.S. adults.Pain reports · 2026Article
- The puzzling effect of disease severity on quality of life in epidermolysis bullosa.Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology : JEADV · 2026Article
- Family History of Chronic Pain: What Impact Does It Have on Current Clinical Status? Results From an Italian Study.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Article
- Opioid Craving in Chronic Pain Management: A Structural Equation Model of Veterans in Pain Rehabilitation.Military medicine · 2026Observational
- Pain in Functional Motor Disorders: Clinical Correlates From the Italian Registry.European journal of neurology · 2026Article
- The role of interoception in alexithymia: a multidimensional analysis.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- The relationship between alexithymia, meaning in life, and quality of life in older breast cancer patients: a cross-sectional study based on variable-centered and person-centered perspectives.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Mapping emotional function in fibromyalgia: integrating alexithymia, pain catastrophizing, and self-compassion.Therapeutic advances in musculoskeletal disease · 2026Article
- Latent profile analysis of alexithymia and its influencing factors in patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Clinical applications of the Defense Mechanisms Rating Scale-Self-Report-30: a systematic review of the first five years.Research in psychotherapy (Milano) · 2025Article
- Towards a better definition of nociplastic pain conditions: a psychological grounded study on fibromyalgia, chronic headache and vulvodynia.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- Affective abstraction predicts variation in alexithymia, depression, and autism spectrum quotient.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Article
- Characterising alexithymia in individuals with functional motor disorders: a cross-sectional analysis of the Italian Registry of Functional Motor Disorders.Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry · 2025Article
- The Association Between Alexithymia, Interoception, and Pain in Pediatric Chronic Pain: A Systematic Review.Integrative medicine reports · 2025Review
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Numerous studies have examined how alexithymia (difficulty identifying and describing one's emotions and a preference for externally oriented thinking) relates to chronic pain and associated disability. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to summarize individual studies that either assessed alexithymia in individuals with chronic pain vs controls or related alexithymia to pain intensity, physical interference, depression, and anxiety. We searched MEDLINE, Embase, and PsycINFO from inception through June 2017; 77 studies met the criteria (valid assessment of alexithymia in adults or children with any chronic pain condition) and were included in analyses (n = 8019 individuals with chronic pain). Primary analyses indicated that chronic pain samples had significantly higher mean alexithymia scores compared with nonclinical (d = 0.81) and clinical nonpain (d = 0.55) controls. In chronic pain samples, alexithymia was significantly positively associated with pain intensity (d = 0.20), physical interference (d = 0.17), depression (d = 0.46), and anxiety (d = 0.43). Secondary meta-analyses of 14 studies that conducted partial correlations that controlled for negative affect-related measures revealed that alexithymia was no longer significantly related to pain intensity or interference. Meta-analysis findings demonstrated that alexithymia is elevated in individuals with chronic pain and related to greater pain intensity and physical interference, although the latter relationships may be accounted for by negative affect. Critical future work is needed that examines alexithymia assessed using non-self-report measures, develops a person-centered perspective on this construct, and identifies how alexithymia is relevant to the assessment and treatment of individuals with chronic pain.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.