The effect of chronic pain on brain-predicted age is unclear. We performed secondary analyses of a large cross-sectional and 3-year longitudinal data set from the Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Chronic Pelvic Pain Research Network to test the hypothesis that chronic pelvic pain accelerates brain aging and brain aging rate. Brain-predicted ages of 492 chronic pelvic pain patients and 72 controls were determined from T1-weighted MRI scans and used to calculate the brain-predicted age gap estimation (brainAGE; brain-predicted - chronological age). Separate regression models determined whether the presence of chronic pelvic pain could explain brainAGE and brain aging rate when accounting for covariates. We performed secondary analyses to understand whether brainAGE was associated with factors that subtype chronic pelvic pain patients (inflammation, widespread pain, and psychological comorbidities). We found a significant association between chronic pelvic pain and brainAGE that differed by sex. Women with chronic pelvic pain had higher brainAGE than female controls, whereas men with chronic pelvic pain exhibited lower brainAGE than male controls on average-however, the effect was not statistically significant in men or women when considered independently. Secondary analyses demonstrated preliminary evidence of an association between inflammatory load and brainAGE. Further studies of brainAGE and inflammatory load are warranted.

中文翻译：

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大脑预测慢性盆腔疼痛的年龄：慢性盆腔疼痛研究网络多学科方法的一项研究。


慢性疼痛对大脑预测年龄的影响尚不清楚。我们对来自慢性盆腔疼痛研究网络研究多学科方法的大型横断面和 3 年纵向数据集进行了二次分析，以检验慢性盆腔疼痛加速大脑衰老和大脑衰老率的假设。492 名慢性盆腔疼痛患者和 72 名对照者的大脑预测年龄由 T1 加权 MRI 扫描确定，并用于计算大脑预测的年龄差距估计 （brainAGE;大脑预测 - 实际年龄）。单独的回归模型确定在考虑协变量时，慢性盆腔疼痛的存在是否可以解释脑年龄和脑衰老率。我们进行了二次分析，以了解 brainAGE 是否与慢性盆腔痛患者亚型的因素 （炎症、广泛疼痛和心理合并症） 相关。我们发现慢性盆腔疼痛与 brainAGE 之间存在显着关联，但因性别而异。患有慢性盆腔疼痛的女性的脑年龄高于女性对照组，而患有慢性盆腔疼痛的男性平均表现出比男性对照组更低的脑年龄——然而，当独立考虑时，这种影响在男性或女性中没有统计学意义。二次分析证明了炎症负荷与 brainAGE 之间存在关联的初步证据。有必要对 brainAGE 和炎症负荷进行进一步研究。