{"doi":"10.1093/pm/pnab327","title":"A Cross-Sectional Study of Pain Sensitivity and Unpleasantness in People with Vascular Dementia","abstract":"OBJECTIVE: Advanced age is associated with a higher risk of both pain and dementia, with many studies finding that dementia often heightens sensitivity to pain. Vascular dementia (VaD) is the second most common type of dementia. Only a few observational or retrospective studies have examined pain responsiveness in VaD, suggesting that it could increase pain unpleasantness (i.e., pain affect). This study compared thermal pain psychophysics between a cohort of patients with VaD and healthy control (HC) subjects. DESIGN: Single-center, cross-sectional, between-subjects design. SUBJECTS: Verbally communicative patients with probable VaD (n = 23) and age- and sex-matched HCs (n = 23). METHODS: A thermal psychophysics protocol assessed \"mild pain\" and \"moderate pain\" thresholds (temperature in degrees Celsius) and associated unpleasantness ratings (0-20 scale) in both the VaD and HC groups. Psychophysics were compared between groups by way of a mixed-effects analysis, controlling for depressive symptoms. RESULTS: There were no significant differences between groups for pain thresholds (main effect P = 0.086, Cohen's d: mild = 0.55, moderate = 0.27). However, unpleasantness ratings were higher in the VaD group than in the HC group (main effect P = 0.003; mild pain P = 0.022, Cohen's d = 0.79; moderate pain P = 0.057, Cohen's d = 0.6). CONCLUSIONS: These results are consistent with prior observational findings suggesting that VaD could make patients more susceptible to pain, particularly its affective component.","journal":"Pain Medicine","year":2021,"id":195848,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":8,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9586,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":768451,"name":"Angela Humbel","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":318467,"name":"Mary S. Dietrich","orcid":"0000-0003-4474-0767","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":318468,"name":"Stephen Bruehl","orcid":"0000-0003-2264-4758","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":437394,"name":"Ronald L. Cowan","orcid":"0000-0002-0041-0670","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":743372,"name":"Karen O. Moss","orcid":"0000-0002-7350-3819","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":437395,"name":"Todd B. Monroe","orcid":"0000-0003-3156-5808","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":767778,"name":"Paul A. Beach","orcid":"0000-0002-3657-7106","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":53,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:50:11.609550Z","pmid":"34791388","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}