Chronic Pain in the Elderly: Mechanisms and Perspectives

Chronic pain affects a large part of the population causing functional disability, being often associated with coexisting psychological disorders, such as depression and anxiety, besides cognitive deficits, and sleep disturbance. The world elderly population has been growing over the last decades an...

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Veröffentlicht in:Frontiers in human neuroscience Jg. 16; S. 736688
Hauptverfasser: Dagnino, Ana P. A., Campos, Maria M.
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 03.03.2022
Frontiers Media S.A
Schlagworte:
Aging
Back pain
Body mass index
Cancer
Chemokines
Chronic pain
Cognitive ability
Cytokines
Dementia disorders
elderly
Geriatrics
life quality
Ligands
management
mechanisms
Neurodegeneration
Neurons
Neuroscience
Older people
Osteoarthritis
perception
Physical activity
Quality of life
Signal transduction
Social interactions
Spinal cord
Tumor necrosis factor-TNF
Vascular diseases
chronic pain
life quality
management
mechanisms
elderly
perception
ISSN:1662-5161, 1662-5161
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Zusammenfassung:Chronic pain affects a large part of the population causing functional disability, being often associated with coexisting psychological disorders, such as depression and anxiety, besides cognitive deficits, and sleep disturbance. The world elderly population has been growing over the last decades and the negative consequences of chronic pain for these individuals represent a current clinical challenge. The main painful complaints in the elderly are related to neurodegenerative and musculoskeletal conditions, peripheral vascular diseases, arthritis, and osteoarthritis, contributing toward poorly life quality, social isolation, impaired physical activity, and dependence to carry out daily activities. Organ dysfunction and other existing diseases can significantly affect the perception and responses to chronic pain in this group. It has been proposed that elderly people have an altered pain experience, with changes in pain processing mechanisms, which might be associated with the degeneration of circuits that modulate the descending inhibitory pathways of pain. Aging has also been linked to an increase in the pain threshold, a decline of painful sensations, and a decrease in pain tolerance. Still, elderly patients with chronic pain show an increased risk for dementia and cognitive impairment. The present review article is aimed to provide the state-of-art of pre-clinical and clinical research about chronic pain in elderly, emphasizing the altered mechanisms, comorbidities, challenges, and potential therapeutic alternatives.
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Edited by: Carmen Moret-Tatay, Catholic University of Valencia San Vicente Mártir, Spain
This article was submitted to Cognitive Neuroscience, a section of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Reviewed by: Etienne Vachon-Presseau, McGill University, Canada; Adrian Alacreu-Crespo, University of Valencia, Spain
ISSN:1662-5161
1662-5161
DOI:10.3389/fnhum.2022.736688