Impaired pain empathic abilities among patients with functional dyspepsia

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Brain structure or functioning abnormality in regions such as insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is associated with functional dyspepsia (FD) and pain empathy, but the relationship between FD and pain empathy remains unclear. The aim of this study was to compare the pain empathic abilities of FD patients and healthy controls (HCs) and investigate the association of pain empathy with clinical characteristics and quality of life of FD patients.

Methods

Pain empathic abilities was measured in 30 FD patients and 30 HCs using a validated pain empathy paradigm. Demographic characteristics, Helicobacter pylori status, duration, dyspeptic symptom score and Nepean Dyspepsia Life Quality Index (NDLQI) were obtained from all patients.

Results

FD patients scored higher than HCs when rating painful pictures, but the accuracy for painful pictures was significantly lower than HCs. Pearson correlation analysis showed significant negative correlation between NDLQI and pain rating scores for painful pictures. When sex, age, educational level, the number of complaints, duration, H. pylori infection and NDLQI were included in multiple linear regression analysis, NDLQI was independently associated with pain ratings.

Conclusions

FD patients showed abnormally enhanced pain empathic abilities, which may be associated with the severity of symptoms and quality of life.

KEYWORDS:

• Dyspeptic symptoms
• functional dyspepsia
• Nepean Dyspepsia Life Quality Index
• pain empathy

Acknowledgments

We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by [University Natural Science Research Projects of Anhui Province] under Grant [number KJ2019A0268] and Scientific Research Foundation for Ph.D. of [the Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University] under Grant [number 2018BSJJ054].