Enter this week’s contest by donating to a pain charity!

Did you know that chronic pain changes your brain?

When you experience chronic pain in a part of your body, the representation of that body area gets changed in your brain.  Research has already shown that these brain changes occur in CPRS (RSD), a neurological pain condition.  A study by researchers in Finland looked to see if similar changes in the brain occur in another painful condition, herpes simplex virus infections.

The 8 patients in the study had widespread pain, but it was on only one side of their bodies.  The study found that there were significant brain changes in the areas that corresponded to painful body areas, compared to both control subjects without pain, as well as to brain areas corresponding to non-painful body areas in the subjects with pain.

The researchers conclude that brain changes also occur in patients with another chronic neuropathic pain condition, herpes simplex infection.  To me, this research supports the idea that chronic pain is associated with brain changes in many types of pain.  This also opens up the possibility that treatments known to help reverse these brain changes may help in other disorders.

This research article, Cortical Reorganization in Primary Somatosensory Cortex in Patients With Unilateral Chronic Pain, was published in The Journal of Pain, 2009, Vol, Pages 854-859.

Grand Rounds, a medical-blog carnival, is published this week at Florence dot com.