RESEARCH - A twin study of posttraumatic stress disordersymptoms and chronic widespread pain

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Pain. 2006 Sep;124(1-2):150-7. Epub 2006 May 15.

A twin study of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and chronic

widespread pain.

Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health,

University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

Previous studies of the association between posttraumatic stress disorder

(PTSD) and chronic widespread pain (CWP) or fibromyalgia have not examined

the role of familial or genetic factors. The goals of this study were to

determine if symptoms of PTSD are related to CWP in a genetically

informative community-based sample of twin pairs, and if so, to ascertain if

the association is due to familial or genetic factors. Data were obtained

from the University of Washington Twin Registry, which contains 1042

monozygotic and 828 dizygotic twin pairs. To assess the symptoms of PTSD, we

used questions from the Impact of Events Scale (IES). IES scores were

partitioned into terciles. CWP was defined as pain located in 3 body regions

lasting at least 1 week during the past 3 months. Random-effects regression

models, adjusted for demographic features and depression, examined the

relationship between IES and CWP. IES scores were strongly associated with

CWP (P<0.0001). Compared to those in the lowest IES tercile, twins in the

highest tercile were 3.5 times more likely to report CWP. Although IES

scores were associated with CWP more strongly among dizygotic than among

monozygotic twins, this difference was not significant. Our findings suggest

that PTSD symptoms, as measured by IES, are strongly linked to CWP, but this

association is not explained by a common familial or genetic vulnerability

to both conditions. Future research is needed to understand the temporal

association of PTSD and CWP, as well as the physiological underpinnings of

this relationship.

PMID: 16701954

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed & cmd=Retrieve & dopt=Abstra\

ctPlus & list_uids=16701954

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