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New Blood Test for Chronic Pain

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,679
Location
Alberta
https://newatlas.com/blood-test-chronic-pain/54507/

I'm not sure how well it would apply to ME/CFS. I believe that my muscle aches are perceived due to modification of neurochemistry in my brain, rather than muscle or nerve network problems, so it probably doesn't show up as immune activation in my blood. The new test certainly sounds like it will have a major impact on other types of chronic pain. Someone will eventually turn this into a finger-prick sensor (or even just press against skin optical sensor?), so that people with chronic pain can get an actual numerical measurement of their pain at any time.

I'm quite impressed with Australian medical research. They seem to study things that other countries ignore.
 

Art Vandelay

Senior Member
Messages
470
Location
Australia
This test was featured on local TV news in Adelaide last week. They interviewed a woman with FM (the implication was that the test could be diagnostic for fibro) so hopefully they might try to apply it to ME.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a link to an article or video at the time to post here. Thanks for posting @Wishful.

Edit: a video of the channel 9 news story is now available here: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...n/news-story/2b872c5dd2ad9916ab78889a2482f758
 
Last edited:

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,679
Location
Alberta
So when are ME patients going to be tested? We could use a study on this, our pain is typically ignored.
I don't know when ME patients will be tested, but hopefully it will be soon. What really got my attention is that until now, pain was one of those things that was ignored because it couldn't be clinically quantified. You had some patients underreporting their pain, and others exaggerating theirs, so it was hard to make scientific sense of anything related to pain levels, so there was an aversion to dealing with pain aspects. If this test works out, doctors will be able to prescribe better treatments, and researchers can develop better treatments.

There will probably be lots of funding to develop this test. Just think of how much money the insurance companies can save from false pain claims. They'll push for it (yes, and probably abuse it).

Oh, this should also reduce the need for horrible animal testing. Instead of trying to judge pain by how a bunch of animals eat, move, twitch, etc, they can just use a small number of subjects and take drops of blood.

If this test works out properly, it should have a huge impact on society. I think Nobel would approve.