CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 133Child Abuse and TraumaPediatric Pain Management TechniquesPain Mechanisms and Treatments

Is self-reported childhood abuse history associated with pain perception among healthy young women and men?

Fillingim, Roger B, Edwards, Robert R·2005·The Clinical Journal of Pain
DOI 10.1097/01.ajp.0000149801.46864.39
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: A self-reported history of childhood physical and/or sexual abuse is frequently reported among chronic pain populations and has been associated with poorer adjustment to pain. In addition, self-reported abuse history has been related to increased pain complaints in population-based studies. One possible explanation for the association between abuse and clinical pain is that abuse victims may display enhanced sensitivity to painful stimuli, which increases the risk of developing clinical pain. However, the limited evidence addressing this issue has been mixed. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between self-reported history of childhood sexual or physical abuse and experimental pain responses in a nonclinical sample of generally healthy young adults. DESIGN: Participants were 110 (56 female, 54 male) college students who completed a series of questionnaires assessing abuse history, recent pain, health care utilization, perceived health, and psychologic variables. Also, measures of thermal and ischemic pain threshold and tolerance were obtained in all participants. In addition, a procedure assessing temporal summation of heat pain was conducted in which intensity and unpleasantness ratings of repetitive thermal stimuli were obtained. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate were assessed at resting and during the ischemic pain task. RESULTS: Participants with a positive childhood abuse history were oversampled, yielding 21 out of 56 (37.5%) women with a positive history of abuse and 13 out of 54 (24.1%) PHA men. No abuse group differences emerged for thermal or ischemic pain thresholds or tolerances (P values>0.05). However, compared to women with no childhood abuse history, women with a positive history of abuse provided significantly lower average pain unpleasantness and peak pain unpleasantness ratings and lower unpleasantness ratings of the first trial during the temporal summation procedure, whereas no abuse group differences emerged for men. Also, compared to participants with no childhood abuse history, participants of both genders with a positive history of abuse demonstrated smaller increases (ie, less temporal summation) in pain unpleasantness ratings across trials of thermal stimulation, and participants with a positive history of abuse showed greater decreases in pain intensity and unpleasantness after reaching their peak pain level (ie, greater wind-down) compared to participants with no childhood abuse history. In addition, participants with a positive history of abuse reported more sites of recent pain, poorer perceived health, greater somatization, and more negative affect. No group differences in resting cardiovascular measures or cardiovascular reactivity were observed. CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that a self-reported history of childhood abuse is associated with decreased sensitivity to experimentally induced pain, especially among women. However, abuse history was associated with increased pain complaints, poorer self-reported health, and greater negative affect. These data highlight the complexity of the relationship between abuse history and pain and illustrate the need for further investigation of potential pain-related correlates of abuse.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1097/01.ajp.0000149801.46864.39

Cites

60 of 60 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Fillingim, R. B., & Edwards, R. R.
Affiliations
Johns Hopkins University (US)
Corresponding author
Fillingim, Roger B
ORCID
Venue
The Clinical Journal of Pain
Publisher
Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Published
2005-09
Volume
21
Issue
5
Pages
387-397
ISSN
0749-8047 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1097/01.ajp.0000149801.46864.39
OpenAlex
W2020128213
Cited by
133
References
58
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 8
FWCI
8.87
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Clinical Journal of Pain (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS41670, R01NS041670)
  • National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (DE 12261, R29DE012261)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Pediatric Pain Management Techniques
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Pain Mechanisms and Treatments
Keywords
childhood abuse, child physical abuse, child sexual abuse, pain perception, pain unpleasantness, temporal summation, pain threshold, pain tolerance, sex differences, healthy young adults, cardiovascular reactivity, somatization, health perception, negative affect, pain sensitivity, thermal pain, ischemic pain, psychosocial factors in pain, university students, pain catastrophizing
MeSH terms
Adult, Child, Child Abuse, Female, Humans, Male, Pain, Pain Measurement, Self Disclosure, Sensation, Sex Factors, United States, Pain Threshold, Sex Distribution

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review