Painful presence - Some spouses cause mates' pain

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Every married person who thinks their spouse is a pain in the caboose, listen up. New research suggests they're actually a pain in the back.

Some spouses could cause their mate's chronic back pain to flare up by merely being in the same room, according to a study presented Sunday in Orlando, Fla.

In tests, these pain patients showed almost three times as much brain activity when their backs were stimulated as people with mates who ignored or downplayed their pain. The attentive partners only needed to be sitting quietly in the room to trigger the excess activity.

"It's as if the spouse has become a stimulating cue for the pain," said Herta Flor, a German psychologist from the University of Heidelberg who ran the study.

Yet Flor said the findings do not mean people should ignore their partners' suffering.

"You just have to be aware of how you respond," said Flor, who said people should try to distract their mate from a painful back.

Her research is among the multitude of studies being presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, being held at the Orange County Convention Center. About 25,000 people are in town to hear the latest findings on Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, brain and spinal cord regeneration, mental illnesses and other brain-based conditions, such as pain.

Pain factors

Researchers just have begun to discern the intricate factors involved in chronic pain, defined as pain that lasts for weeks, months or years after the underlying physical condition has been treated. An estimated 50 million people are living with chronic pain from migraines, arthritis, cancer, nerve damage, back injuries and other problems.

In Flor's study, people with chronic back pain were split into two groups. In the group labeled "solicitous spouses," the pain victim was married to someone who responded to the discomfort with massages, getting medicine, waiting on them and other actions.

In the other group of "nonsolicitous spouses," the partners tended to downplay the pain, sometimes leaving the room or trying to distract the person with other activities.

The subject's backs were stimulated with electricity to induce pain and their brain activity was recorded on an EEG -- electroencephalogram. When the highly responsive spouses were sitting in the room, subjects showed nearly three times as much brain activity. They also were more likely to moan or make overt expressions of pain. The brain activity dropped when the spouse left the room.

But the same increase was not seen between the two groups when researchers applied the electrical stimulation to one of the subjects' fingers. This indicates that all kinds of pain are not affected by a spouse's response -- only long-lasting, chronic pain that has become a regular factor in the couple's lives.

Flor said people can help break this pattern by responding to a spouse's pain in new ways, such as suggesting that they go out for a walk when the discomfort starts.