Alzheimer's disease is painful: Study

Alzheimer's disease is painful: Study

Patients with Alzheimer's disease do feel pain, but since they are not able to express it properly, they are most often under treated, a new Australian study has found.

Leonie J. Cole and colleagues at the University of Melbourne and the National Ageing Research Institute in Australia conducted a small study involving 14 patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease. A group of 15 patients who were age-matched with the former group, but did not have the disease, served as a control.

It is a general assumption that Alzheimer's patients do not feel pain as strongly as normal individuals. That is why they receive a lesser number of painkillers that normal people. However the present study disproves the notion that pain is not a factor in Alzheimer's disease.

Cole's team subjected the participants to a thumb test in which a device was pressed on their thumbs till they felt varying degrees of pain. As this test was being conducted, researchers scanned the brains of the patients using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They found that pain activity in Alzheimer's patients was just as strong as normal ones, in some cases the pain activity was heightened as well.

"They have the same pain threshold as you or I, they just can't convey what they feel like we can," said study co-author Dr Michael Farrell. "That's disturbing to say the least, because they'll be feeling the pain but not getting the relief from it."

Pain activity is felt in two areas in the brain. The first one is a basic area and the second is the emotional response to the pain. It is the second area that is damaged in Alzheimer's. So doctors felt that such patients do not feel any pain. "Problems with their mind and memory mean they quite literally forget they had terrible pain very recently so if a doctor asks, they'll say they're fine," Dr Farrell said.