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. 2025 Aug 30.
doi: 10.1007/s10072-025-08444-9. Online ahead of print.

Characteristics and influencing factors of pain in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a focus on symptom management

Xianjing Hu #  1 , Mingyu Wei #  2   3 , Heli Zhang #  4 , Mingxuan Wang  1 , Siwei Zhang  5 , Baohua Li  6
Affiliations

Characteristics and influencing factors of pain in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a focus on symptom management

Xianjing Hu et al. Neurol Sci. .

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the characteristics and influencing factors of pain symptoms in ALS patients, provide references for the formulation of pain coping measures in clinical practice.

Materials and methods: The research design was a cross-sectional study.ALS patients were investigated using scales such as the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI). Binary logistic regression equation and multiple linear regression equation were used to analyze the influencing factors of whether occur pain and pain degree in ALS patients.

Results: 149 (74.1%) patients had pain symptoms, and 51 (25.4%) patients had pain as the first symptom. Patients with moderate to severe pain accounted for 60.4%. Fatigue, social support, self-efficacy, and poor sleep quality have been associated with whether occur pain in ALS patients. Personality traits, education, fatigue, social support, physical function, and self-efficacy were associated with pain levels in ALS patients.

Conclusions: Pain is an important indicator of functional decline, which can directly affect the rehabilitation outcome, reduce the quality of life of patients, and is crucial for predicting disease progression and optimizing end-of-life care, which should arouse the full attention of clinical medical personnel and scientific researchers. In the future, it is necessary to strengthen pain intervention in rehabilitation programs.

Keywords: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Characteristics; Influencing factors; Pain; Rehabilitation.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Hospital Ethics Review Committee of Peking University Third Hospital(IRB00006761 --M2023423). Informed consent: was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Competing interests: The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

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