Jean-Benoit Legault, The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — The chronic pain experienced by men and women is produced by different mechanisms, finds a new study involving Quebec researchers, which means it must also be fought in different ways.
This might also explain why certain chronic pains, such as migraines or fibromyalgia, are much more prevalent in women than in men. Women also have greater sensitivity to mechanical, thermal, electrical and chemical stimuli.
It is not a question here of the intensity of the pain felt, nor of settling the interminable debate as to knowing who, sir or madam, really suffers the most. Instead, the researchers found that the neural mechanisms that lead to chronic inflammatory pain are not the same in both sexes.
“The event (which causes the pain) is the same, but the way to get there, the whole reaction of our body, is not the same”, summed up one of the study’s leaders, Professor Yves De Koninck from the Faculty of Medicine and the CERVO Research Center at Laval University.
Dr. De Koninck’s team and that of Professor Michael Hildebrand, from Carleton University, used spinal cord tissue taken from 10 women and 12 men following their death, as well as male and female mice, to study the neural mechanisms underlying chronic inflammatory pain.
They find in the pages of the medical journal Brain that the protein BDNF, which increases sensitivity to pain, does not have the same effect on male human tissues and male mice as it does on female human tissues and female mice.
“We saw that there was a fundamental difference between men and women,” said De Koninck. What we have seen is that one of the mechanisms, one of the neurochemical signals that we had identified in humans, is not the one that worked to disrupt (…) in women.
Some chronic pain syndromes are more prevalent in women than in men, he continues, “but it’s not because women are weaker, it’s not because they’re less resilient or whatever. it’s… it’s just that it’s different, and it’s more likely to happen”.
As a general rule, scientific studies have for a long time been carried out in males, on the pretext that the absence of hormones made them easier to study. It was then assumed that the results obtained applied to both sexes, which is now known not to be necessarily true.
Thus, a study published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience by the team of Professor De Koninck and that of Theodore Price, from the University of Texas, showed that a peptide involved in migraine, CGRP, exacerbates pain in females, but not in males.
Faced with this new knowledge, said Mr. De Koninck, we must try to find, if possible, a “common core” that will effectively attack chronic pain in both men and women. But if this is not possible, then one will have to devise unique strategies for each.
“By clarifying all the pieces of the puzzle a little, it will open the door for us to develop certain drugs, he concluded. We talk a lot regarding personalized medicine, precision medicine, well that’s part of it.”
It is estimated that between 20% and 25% of the population will experience at least one episode of chronic pain during their lifetime.
