Hi Waclaw,

Please email me at [email protected] and I'll send some articles to you.  I am having trouble getting them to load here

Cheers

Rich

Too much speculations on the topic. According to the evidence-based perspective, the emphasis is on the racial and ethnic origin. As far as I can know,  the African Americans have lower heat-pain and pressure-pain thresholds   than non-Hispanic Whites, and that could apply to African Europeans as well. About sensitivity, the incidence of chronic pain is higher among immigrants in Europe than among the native European population. And the evidence comes not only from EU member states, but from countries with “special relationships” with  EU, like Switzerland and the UK (as a future perspective) as well (Swiss Med Wkly. 2013;143:w13875).

Good luck!

Dimitar

Dear Dimitar, Dear Rich,

Thank you for yours help! I have already found a new meta-analysis that supported non-Hispanic Whites have higher pain tolerance and experience less pain.

It is so interesting that in much of the studies I have looked at, non-Hispanic Whites were not divided into subgroups, e.g. Italians, Hispanic etc... 

Cheers,

Wacław

Dear Waclaw,

Glad to hear you are progressing, the key point in the measure of pain is that it is so subjective in nature.  Have you considered adding biomarkers such as salivary alpha amylase secretion, heart rate and blood pressure?  Also, if you are comparing groups using a visual analog scale, I'd encourage you to use a nonparametric tests rather than parametric (2-sample Wilcoxon, Krusk-Wallis for > 2 groups, etc.)

Look forward to following your progress.

Cheers,

Rich

Of course. Based on the culture and the wealth of the country. Pain is subjective. Complaining of pain normally occurs in wealthier countries, but culture accounts for a

Dr Sastry

Dear Rich,

Thank you a lot for all of suggestions that I received from you! Definitely, I will have to add any kind of 'objective' measure of pain, whenever possible.

Best,

Wacław

Only a strange personal impression from studies with electrical and heat/cold pain threshold measurements: Scandinavians have higher pain thresholds than other people....(?)

Would be really funny, if a controlled study would confirm this,

greetings from Vienna,

Birgit

Because pain sensitivity is dependent on both genetics and experience, individuals who have more frequent painful procedure pain will have a higher sensitivity.  So if an ethnic group generally finds itself on the lower economic rungs of the societal ladder, that ethnic group may have more pain sensitivity due  to the lower quality techniques and procedure pain control it experiences during inoculations, blood draws and emergency room visits.   In the United States, the Center for Disease Control recommends 25 different inoculations by age 3.  Kids that come from families under financial stress, transportation issues with parents working two jobs and cannot always make medical appointments reliably are likely to see their children receive 4 or 5 vaccinations at one appointment.  After the first injection, the child's attention is turned to the procedure and this increases their pain perception for the next 3 or 4 injections.  These kids experience long term sensitization and classical fear conditioning.  They are highly sensitized.  40 years ago clinicians would come back to the US after donating services in developing countries and they would report how stoic and compliant the children were.  They would say "American kids are such crybabies".   Now, these "developing" countries have developed western style medicine in the form of abundant inoculations and the clinicians returning from them have no idea what I am talking about when I tell that story.  They would say, "No.  Those kids had a lot of anxiety."  Moral of the story here is that an ethnic group will have high or low sensitivity to pain depending on if it has access to western style medicine.  When it does have access, the quality of that access will matter too.  So an ethnic group in one country may have high sensitivity while in another it may be low.  my hunch is that this effect will be a confounding factor that will limit your ability to make broad conclusions about any ethnic group's sensitivity to pain unless you are a brilliant epidemiologist who can control for these factors.  No matter what, you have asked a good question and I would be interested in any new light that you could shed on the matter.  Good luck!