Traumatic Brain Injury: Chronic Back Pain Linked to Changes in the Brain

A German research team has found that people suffering from chronic lower back pain also had microstructural changes in their brains. Using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI,) the researchers tracked the movement of water molecules in the brain's gray and white matter. Dr. Jurgen Lutz, who lead the research team, said that the results were important because "a major problem for patients with chronic pain is making their condition believable to doctors, relatives and insurance carriers. DTI could play an important role in this regard. With these objective and reproducible correlates in brain imaging, chronic pain may no longer be a subjective experience. For pain diagnosis and treatment, the consequences could be enormous."

Chronic Back Pain Linked To Changes In The Brain

In comparison to the healthy volunteers, those with chronic lower back pain had significantly more directed diffusion in the pain-processing regions of the brain. The researchers say that the findings may help explain the failure of many back pain treatments and be helpful in developing new treatments. However, it still is unclear whether back pain or brain changes occur first.