# Women with irritable bowel syndrome unable to regulate pain effectively



## Jeffrey Roberts (Apr 15, 1987)

*Women with irritable bowel syndrome unable to regulate pain effectively*Findings may lead to new understanding of disorder and novel treatment approachesBy Rachel Champeau1/8/2008 2:00:00 PMUCLA researchers have found that women who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome are unable to effectively turn off a pain-modulation mechanism in the brain, causing them to be more sensitive to abdominal discomfort than women without the condition. The findings, which appeared in the Jan. 9 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, may lead to a greater understanding of irritable bowel syndrome and new treatment approaches. Irritable bowel syndrome affects 10 to 15 percent of the U.S. population and causes discomfort in the abdomen, along with diarrhea or constipation, or both. Currently, there is no cure for IBS, and treatments only lessen the symptoms. "A large number of patients with irritable bowel disease suffer major decrements in their quality of life," said study author Dr. Emeran Mayer, professor of medicine, digestive diseases and physiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Our research team studies the brain activity underlying the pain experience in patients with chronic pain disorders like IBS." Previous research in the field has shown that the brain can prepare for pain in ways that either inhibit or amplify the sensory experience. When expected pain is predictable, tolerable and inescapable and will result in a reward - like a doctor's injection to lessen its impact - most people's brains limit the intensity of the pain experience. One way they do this is by decreasing the "gain" within the circuits that process the pain signal - similar to turning down the volume on a stereo - in order to make the body's perception of pain less acute. On the other hand, when the anticipated pain is perceived as escapable and potentially dangerous - such as burning one's hand on a hot stove - most people's brains will amplify the pain response in order to quicken reaction times and minimize possible injury. The current study showed that IBS patients cannot turn down their pain response, even when the expected pain is not dangerous, making them highly sensitive to even mild discomfort. UCLA researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record the brain activity of 14 women with IBS and 12 healthy women during cued anticipation and a mild abdominal pain stimulus. During pain anticipation, activity in the brains of subjects without IBS decreased in those areas involved with pain and emotional arousal - including the insula, amygdala and brainstem. IBS patients could not deactivate these circuits effectively, although they knew the pain was not dangerous. "The abdominal hypersensitivity that is a hallmark of IBS may represent an inability to down-regulate pain and emotional-arousal circuits," said lead author Steven Berman, a senior research scientist at UCLA. "IBS patients may have an inability to inhibit the competing tendency to up-regulate emotional arousal in order to escape pain faster." As expected, IBS patients reported lower pain thresholds and more anxiety than healthy women. Anxiety correlated with more brain activity during anticipation but not during the receipt of the pain stimulus. "Negative emotions like anxiety and anger may interfere with the brain's ability to strategically down-regulate pain-arousal pathways in situations where such an increased sensitivity is maladaptive," Berman said. Activity in pain-arousal areas increased among both groups of women during the receipt of pain, but IBS patients showed greater boosts in several brain structures. The lower degree of anticipatory inhibition in arousal circuits was associated with more activity during the actual pain stimulus in executive cortical areas of the brain, which are associated with pain coping. "We found that the lower the brain response during anticipation in the arousal circuits, the less the dampening effect of the cortex on pain sensitivity during the actual pain stimulus," Berman said. Researchers note that describing this phenomenon in IBS leads to the classic chicken-and-egg debate: How much of the anticipatory brain dysfunction was produced by the long history of abdominal pain in patients, and how much did it predate and even cause their symptoms? "Additional research may reveal that some pain patients have a primary difference in their brain's reaction to pain," said Mayer, who also directs the UCLA Center for the Neurobiology of Stress. "If we can identify receptors and genes associated with these abnormal brain responses, we should improve both identification of predisposed patients and development of effective remedies." Several convergent findings from UCLA and other research groups support the importance of this research for better understanding IBS and other functional pain syndromes, including fibromyalgia and interstitial cystitis. Female patients show greater abnormalities than their male counterparts in this early brain response, and genetic factors have been identified which, together with early adverse life events, may predispose them to an altered responsiveness of emotional arousal circuits. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and in part by Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Mayer has received research grants from Novartis and has previously served as a consultant. Additional study authors include Bruce D. Naliboff, Brandall Suyenobu, Jennifer S. Labus, Jean Stains, Gordon Ohning, Lisa Kilpatrick, Joshua A. Bueller, Kim Ruby and Johanna Jarcho; authors are from the UCLA Center for Neurovisceral Sciences and Women's Health, the UCLA departments of physiology and of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, the UCLA Brain Research Institute, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.Rachel Champeau, [email protected]© 2008 UC Regents


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## eric (Jul 8, 1999)

I just want to say this does not mean its "all in the head." Which sometimes it comes across as through the media or the writer ect..This is another part of the puzzle and how very complex brain gut interations work together.Dr Mayer had this quote back in 2003"Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Pathophysiology Pathophysiology Charlene Prather, MD: With irritable bowel syndrome there are several pathophysiologic mechanisms that we think are important. Certainly motility is important with dysregulation of the muscle and nerve within the gut. But it's not just abnormal motility. There is also an abnormal in visceral sensitivity or sensation, such that relatively normal things that may be going on in the gut are uncomfortable for the patient. Of course the brain has its role as well with higher functions, cognitive functions influencing both the sensory functions of the gut, but also motility. So they're working together to create the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. *Emeran Mayer, MD: There's essentially two camps. Some - we're still trying to find the one cell that ultimately does explain - or the one molecule that does explain all the symptoms. I think that camp has not given up on that attempt. There's not too many people I would say that are on the other extreme, that say it's all in the brain and it's all, you know, a CNS disorder. I think - But the majority - and this is, again, due to this education campaign over the last several years and the research that's coming out - really confirms that concept of a brain-gut interaction that is altered in these disorders, and that could explain all the symptoms, from the psychiatric comorbidities all the way down to immune cell alterations at the gut level. *http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?ei=UTF...=1&.intl=usThe 2007 symposium info is about these mechanisms as well and Dr mayers videos.


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## eric (Jul 8, 1999)

FYIJ Neurosci. 2008 Jan 9;28(2):349-359.Reduced Brainstem Inhibition during Anticipated Pelvic Visceral Pain Correlates with Enhanced Brain Response to the Visceral Stimulus in Women with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.Berman SM, Naliboff BD, Suyenobu B, Labus JS, Stains J, Ohning G, Kilpatrick L, Bueller JA, Ruby K, Jarcho J, Mayer EA.Departments of Medicine, Physiology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, and Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles Center for Neurovisceral Sciences and Women's Health, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90073, and Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, California 90073.Cognitive factors such as fear of pain and symptom-related anxiety play an important role in chronic pain states. The current study sought to characterize abnormalities in preparatory brain response before aversive pelvic visceral distention in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients and their possible relationship to the consequences of distention. The brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response to anticipated and delivered mild and moderate rectal distention was recorded from 14 female IBS patients and 12 healthy controls. During cued anticipation of distention, activity decreased in the insula, supragenual anterior cingulate cortex (sACC), amygdala, and dorsal brainstem (DBS) of controls. IBS patients showed less anticipatory inactivation. Group differences were significant in the right posterior insula and bilateral DBS. Self-rated measures of negative affect during scanning were higher in patients than controls (p < 0.001), and the anticipatory BOLD decreases in DBS were inversely correlated with these ratings. During subsequent distention, both groups showed activity increases in insula, dorsal ACC, and DBS and decreases in the infragenual ACC. The increases were more extensive in patients, producing significant group differences in dorsal ACC and DBS. The amplitude of the anticipatory decrease in the pontine portion of DBS was associated with greater activation during distention in right orbitofrontal cortex and bilateral sACC. Both regions have been associated previously with corticolimbic inhibition and cognitive coping. Deficits in preparatory inhibition of DBS, including the locus ceruleus complex and parabrachial nuclei, may interfere with descending corticolimbic inhibition and contribute to enhanced brain responsiveness and perceptual sensitivity to visceral stimuli in IBS.PMID: 18184777


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