{"doi":"10.2147/jpr.s301651","title":"Greater Pain Severity is Associated with Higher Glucocorticoid Levels in Hair Among a Cohort of People Living with HIV","abstract":"Background: Pain is a common occurrence and persistent symptom, which has an adverse impact on individual well-being and quality of life among people living with HIV (PLHIV). Alteration in the activity of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis resulting in abnormal glucocorticoid levels had been proposed to play important roles in those associations. Purpose: This study aimed to investigate whether pain severity was associated with hair glucocorticoid levels, a novel method of measuring long-term glucocorticoid exposure, among a large cohort of Chinese PLHIV. Methods: A measure of pain severity and hair samples were collected from 431 adults PLHIV in Guangxi, China. Glucocorticoid (cortisol and cortisone) in hair were quantified by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The general linear model was used to test the associations of pain severity with hair glucocorticoid levels after adjusting for potential confounding factors. Results: Of the 431 PLHIV, 273 reported none pain, 87 reported mild pain, and 71 reported moderate-severe pain. Hair cortisone, but not hair cortisol, was found to differ significantly among the three pain severity groups ( F =3.90, p =0.021). PLHIV reported moderate-severe pain had higher hair cortisone than those reported mild ( p =0.070) or none pain ( p =0.014), with no differences between the latter two pain severity groups. Conclusion: Greater pain severity is associated with higher hair cortisone levels among Chinese PLHIV. In order to reduce the long-term glucocorticoid levels, interventions managing pain should be considered for PLHIV with moderate-severe pain. Keywords: pain, hair cortisol, hair cortisone, HIV","journal":"Journal of Pain Research","year":2021,"id":207294,"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":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9569,"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":42140,"name":"Xiaoming Li","orcid":"0000-0002-5555-9034","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":295080,"name":"Shan Qiao","orcid":"0000-0003-1834-1834","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":453833,"name":"Shuaifeng Liu","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792377,"name":"Zhiyong Shen","orcid":"0000-0003-4950-2434","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":330415,"name":"Yuejiao Zhou","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":452780,"name":"Quan Zhang","orcid":"0000-0001-6028-6977","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":62,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:51:45.688025Z","pmid":"33727858","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":[]}