The Prevalence and Cross-Sectional Associations of Neuropathic-like Pain Among Older, Community-Dwelling Women with Arthritis. de Luca KE, Parkinson L, Byles JE, Lo TK, Pollard HP and Blyth FM. Pain Medicine 2016 Feb, pp 1308-1316
Participants were recruited from the 1946-1951 cohort of the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women's Health. 579 women consented and 147 self reported arthritis. Of these, approximately 1 in 4 scored ≥12 on the painDETECT screening tool.
Comment:
This important study in Australian subjects shows that a significant subsection of patients with arthritis report neuropathic-like symptoms and this is higher than the background rate of neuropathic pain symptoms in the general population.
Clinical invocation is that the patient should be asked about neuropathic pain symptoms if they report osteoarthritis or other forms of arthritis, and certainly, if their treatment is refractory, consideration should be given as to whether they have underlying neuropathic pain.