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. 2021 Jan 12;11(1):577.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-80094-7.

The impact of Pain-related emotions on migraine

Seonghoon Kim  1 , Dae-Woong Bae  2 , Sang-Gue Park  3 , Jeong-Wook Park  4
Affiliations

The impact of Pain-related emotions on migraine

Seonghoon Kim et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

The response to pain is highly individual and can be influenced by complex emotional perception. This study aims to investigate the status of the pain-related emotional response, and the influence on headache characteristics and disability in migraine. We studied the pain-related emotional response in 145 consecutive migraine patients using the Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale (PASS), the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS), and the Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire (PSQ) and compared them with 106 healthy controls. We investigated the relationship between emotional factors and migraine characteristics. The effect of pain-related emotion on migraine-related disability assessed with the Headache Impact Test-6 (HIT-6) and the Migraine Disability Assessment (MIDAS). Migraine patients showed significantly higher scores on total PASS (p < 0.001), PCS (p < 0.001) and PSQ (p = 0.002) compared to the healthy controls. The HIT-6 was weakly correlated with PASS (r = 0.390, p < 0.001) and PCS (r = 0.354, p < 0.001). PASS-Total (p = 0.001), headache frequency (p = 0.003), and HADS-Anxiety (p = 0.028) were independent variables associated with HIT-6. Headache frequency (p < 0.001) was an independent variable associated with MIDAS. The structural equation model indicated that headache severity has direct loading on emotion and subsequently influenced migraine-related disability. Disability has a significant effect on the frequency of abortive medication use. Migraine patients have altered emotional responses to pain perception. Pain-related anxiety made an important contribution to headache-related disability. The present results suggest that the management of disability by considering various pain-related emotional factors may be necessary for the therapeutic aspects of migraine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Path illustration of the hypothesized model. Note PASS_T, PASS-Total; PCS_T, PCS-Total, PSQ_T, PSQ-Total; Severity, headache severity; VAS, visual analog scale; Rescue, abortive use; Med, frequency of abortive medication use.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Flow chart depicting the migraine participation by using smartphone headache diary (SHD).
Figure 3
Figure 3
The graphs show a statistically significant difference in emotional factors of pain perception between migraine patients with migraine and healthy controls (p < 0.05).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Path diagram of structural equation model with standardized path coefficients. Note *p < 0.05; **p < 0.005.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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