Baby's Pain May Cause Lasting Intolerance to Discomfort
July 27, 2000 -- According to new research, experiencing pain in the earliest stages of life may explain why some people seem more sensitive to physical discomfort than others. If the findings in studies on animals hold true for humans, minor changes in the way hospitals treat infants -- especially premature babies-- could help prevent a lot of future pain.
When researchers from the National Institutes of Health injected the paws of newborn rats with an irritating chemical, they found that, even after the animals were fully grown and their paws long since healed, the experience had caused permanent changes in their brain wiring that made them ultra-sensitive to pain.
"The study shows that pain and tissue injury during early infancy may alter neuronal circuits that affect pain perception for your entire life," says lead researcher M.A. Ruda, PhD, who is chief of the cellular neuroscience section at the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Bethesda, Md.
Even as adults, Ruda says, "the response of these treated rats to a painful situation was altered, compared to animals that had not experienced neonatal pain and tissue injury." These animals were significantly less tolerant of pain, and were hypersensitive to touch.
When the researchers examined the brains of these rats, the nerve cells looked very different from those of normal rats. "We found that in animals that had experienced neonatal pain and injury, there were more pain fibers, and that the fibers covered more length in the spinal cord than they normally would," Ruda tells WebMD.
According to Ruda, the next step in the research is identifying precisely which time periods and which types of stimuli are critical for the wiring changes to take place. Exactly what triggers these changes remains a mystery.
With medical advances improving the survival rates for premature babies, many of whom endure prolonged discomfort in the hospital, "this is something that really does need to be addressed," Ruda says.
"There are studies showing that extremely low birth weight children complain more about pain and hurt more in general. Their parents notice that they respond more to pain than their full-term siblings," says Ruda. Research also shows that the use of local anesthetics and implanted pain-killer pumps can reduce the time it takes for adults to recover from surgery.
Baby's Pain May Cause Lasting Intolerance to Discomfort
July 27, 2000 -- According to new research, experiencing pain in the earliest stages of life may explain why some people seem more sensitive to physical discomfort than others. If the findings in studies on animals hold true for humans, minor changes in the way hospitals treat infants -- especially premature babies-- could help prevent a lot of future pain.
When researchers from the National Institutes of Health injected the paws of newborn rats with an irritating chemical, they found that, even after the animals were fully grown and their paws long since healed, the experience had caused permanent changes in their brain wiring that made them ultra-sensitive to pain.
"The study shows that pain and tissue injury during early infancy may alter neuronal circuits that affect pain perception for your entire life," says lead researcher M.A. Ruda, PhD, who is chief of the cellular neuroscience section at the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Bethesda, Md.
Even as adults, Ruda says, "the response of these treated rats to a painful situation was altered, compared to animals that had not experienced neonatal pain and tissue injury." These animals were significantly less tolerant of pain, and were hypersensitive to touch.
When the researchers examined the brains of these rats, the nerve cells looked very different from those of normal rats. "We found that in animals that had experienced neonatal pain and injury, there were more pain fibers, and that the fibers covered more length in the spinal cord than they normally would," Ruda tells WebMD.
According to Ruda, the next step in the research is identifying precisely which time periods and which types of stimuli are critical for the wiring changes to take place. Exactly what triggers these changes remains a mystery.
With medical advances improving the survival rates for premature babies, many of whom endure prolonged discomfort in the hospital, "this is something that really does need to be addressed," Ruda says.
"There are studies showing that extremely low birth weight children complain more about pain and hurt more in general. Their parents notice that they respond more to pain than their full-term siblings," says Ruda. Research also shows that the use of local anesthetics and implanted pain-killer pumps can reduce the time it takes for adults to recover from surgery.
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