Saskia Hahnenkamp
Dipl.-Biol. Saskia Hahnenkamp
Full member: March 2007 - February 2010
Dissertation title: Chronic musculoskeletal pain: The role of emotions in modulating neurobiological correlates.
Abstract: Musculoskeletal pain belongs to the most common disorders people complain about in primary doctor’s practice. So it is more inconceivable that this field has not been very well studied so far. Furthermore most of the researches on musculoskeletal pain are concerned only with fibromyalgia or with myalgias of the masticatory system. This study will analyse different types of chronic musculoskeletal pain: Patients with well defined hereditary diseases (i.e. myotonic dystrophy type 2), with little evidence of inflammation (interstitial myositis) and patients with muscle pain without any pathological findings, for example. The main interest lies in differences of substances of the immune system and affective differences between the patients groups and also in comparison to healthy people. Often painful diseases are accompanied by emotional changes. The persons concerned can suffer from depression, anxiety and social and personality changes (White et al., 2002; Ernberg et al., 2000; Niemier et al., 2006). Pain processing and emotions are connected because of equal pathways, they pass during processing. This is why pain experiences also quantification, which is represented separately from the localisation. It is known that the amygdale is an important area for the interaction of chronic pain and negative affective states. But also between immune system and emotions there exists a connection (Maes, 1995; O’Brian et al., 2004). Patients suffering from chronic musculoskeletal pain show often indications of a slight or worse depressive mood (Pallant & Bailey, 2005; White et al., 2002). With this study I want to see how big is the influence of monoamines, cytokines and chemokines on chronic musculoskeletal pain and on emotional changes. In addition, I hope to find differences in reactions onto emotional items between the patient groups with and without depressive moods and the healthy ones. This study will be completed with a project on special knockout mice that are supposed to show differences in developing muscle pain in comparison to wildtype mice.
Principal investigator:
Prof. Dr. C. Sommer
Department of Neurology, Josef-Schneider-Str. 11, 97080 Würzburg
Current position:
Clinical Research Associate
Medpace Germany GmbH
Gmunder Strasse 53
81379 München
http://www.medpace.com/
