Conference: "The Painful Truth"
The Painful Truth: A Conference on Gender and Pain Research, held last month at the University of Maryland-Baltimore, set out to examine differences in pain perception and treatment between men and women. According to a FoxNews.com report on the conference, the conference included a two-day closed-door meeting in the hopes of creating recommendations for standardizing pain research, so that it could begin to take into account some of the key differences. The conference was sponsored by the Sex, Gender, and Pain Special Interest Group of the International Association for the Study of Pain.
Joel D Greenspan, a conference organizer, said that pain research lacks "guidelines to guarantee consistency from study to study." Women and men, as is often the case in neurological studies, were being grouped together when their responses might be very different. The FoxNews.com report claims that "recent studies" show that men are more likely to be prescribed painkillers than women, but Paulose-Ram et al. (2003) did not show any significant difference between prescription painkiller use between men and women. One of the main issues to be addressed is whether it is feasible or useful to create painkillers that work for one sex, but not for the other, something of a hot topic in the the study of pharmacology (see articles here and here -- discussion, not research). (Also see Pink Pills and Blue Pills for the last Difference Blog discussion of this topic).
Today's entry is a bit rushed, and I apologize. I have to run off to go get a pelvic ultrasound. After three years of not menstruating, my doctor wants to make sure there's no problems developing with my dormant (but otherwise intact) uterus. Honestly, I know there are lots of other parts that can go wrong in some of the systems I don't have (for example, I'll never have to get a prostate exam), but a lot of the time it really feels like I got the short end of every stick (no pun intended).
But thinking about my frequent doctor's visits in reference to today's topic (pain management), I worry about what the "future of pain management" holds for irregular cases such as myself. Most of the pain literature seems to focus on hormonal differences. My hormone levels are artificially induced, and in all likelihood, mismatched to my neural structure. Which drug will I use?
Joel D Greenspan, a conference organizer, said that pain research lacks "guidelines to guarantee consistency from study to study." Women and men, as is often the case in neurological studies, were being grouped together when their responses might be very different. The FoxNews.com report claims that "recent studies" show that men are more likely to be prescribed painkillers than women, but Paulose-Ram et al. (2003) did not show any significant difference between prescription painkiller use between men and women. One of the main issues to be addressed is whether it is feasible or useful to create painkillers that work for one sex, but not for the other, something of a hot topic in the the study of pharmacology (see articles here and here -- discussion, not research). (Also see Pink Pills and Blue Pills for the last Difference Blog discussion of this topic).
Today's entry is a bit rushed, and I apologize. I have to run off to go get a pelvic ultrasound. After three years of not menstruating, my doctor wants to make sure there's no problems developing with my dormant (but otherwise intact) uterus. Honestly, I know there are lots of other parts that can go wrong in some of the systems I don't have (for example, I'll never have to get a prostate exam), but a lot of the time it really feels like I got the short end of every stick (no pun intended).
But thinking about my frequent doctor's visits in reference to today's topic (pain management), I worry about what the "future of pain management" holds for irregular cases such as myself. Most of the pain literature seems to focus on hormonal differences. My hormone levels are artificially induced, and in all likelihood, mismatched to my neural structure. Which drug will I use?