Pain, disease severity and associations with individual quality of life in patients with motor neuron diseases.

backgroundUp to 85% of people with motor neuron disease (MND) report pain, but whether pain has negative impact on quality of life is unclear. The aim was to study associations between pain, disease severity and individual quality of life (IQOL) in patients with MND.

methodsIn this cross sectional study, 61 patients were recruited from four multidisciplinary teams in Sweden, whereof 55 responded to the pain measure (The Brief Pain Inventory - Short form) and were included in the main analyses. Disease severity was measured with the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Functional Rating Scale - Revised Version, and individual quality of life was measured with a study-specific version of the Schedule for the Evaluation of Individual Quality of Life - Direct Weighting.

resultsForty-one (74%) of the participants who answered BPI-SF (n = 55) reported pain. Thirty-nine (71%) of those reported pain during the past 24 h. The severity of pain was on average moderate, with eight participants (14%) reporting severe pain (PSI ≥ 7). Satisfaction with IQOL for the entire sample was good (scale 1-7, where 1 equals poor quality of life): median 5, interquartile range (IQR) 2.75 and there was no difference in satisfaction with IQOL between those reporting pain/not reporting pain (median 5, IQR 2/median 5, IQR 3.5, Mann-Whitney U = 249, p = 0.452). There was neither any correlation between pain severity and satisfaction with IQOL, nor between disease severity and satisfaction with IQOL.

conclusionsThe results add to the hypothesis that associations between non-motor symptoms such as pain prevalence and pain severity and IQOL in MND are weak. Pain prevalence was high and the results pointed to that some participants experienced high pain severity, which indicate that pain assessments and pain treatments tailored to the specific needs of the MND population should be developed and scientifically evaluated.