This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (12)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Pain  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: A newspaper story reported that by October 1, 2001, three weeks following the terrorist attacks on the United States, physicians in Washington, DC, were "inundated" by complaints of worsening pain in patients already diagnosed with chronic pain conditions.¹ This report claimed that the increase in pain was "clearly triggered by stress over the attacks" and insomnia. Subsequent studies have reported an increase in insomnia immediately after the attacks,² decreased parasympathetic tone in some individuals,³ and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.⁴

No reports, however, have compared pain expression immediately prior to and following the attacks in patients with preexisting pain conditions. We had an opportunity to collect such data during a noninterventional feasibility study of a handheld computer–based data collection system to be used in an upcoming clinical trial. In this small pilot study, patients with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition known to be exacerbated by stress, were . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Methods



CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?