美国国家公共电台 NPR Women May Be More Adept Than Men At Discerning Pain

 

NOEL KING, HOST:

Women who abuse opioids often get started when they're prescribed medication. Now, that's in part because women are more likely than men to seek help for pain. Researchers are studying differences in pain perception, and they're finding that women may be more adept¹ at discerning pain than men are. NPR's Patti Neighmond has the story.

PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE²: This is the pain lab at the University of Florida.

ROGER FILLINGIM: Are you ready?

LUCIA MADEY: Mm-hmm.

NEIGHMOND: Researcher and psychologist Roger Fillingim is testing how much pain volunteer Lucia Madey (ph) feels. He's using a probe about the size of a quarter.

FILLINGIM: It's going to be at a baseline temperature, and then it will heat up to a target temperature very briefly³.

NEIGHMOND: Each time the probe heats up, Madey rates her pain on a scale of zero to 10.

MADEY: Eight.

FILLINGIM: Great.

MADEY: Nine.

NEIGHMOND: Fillingim has been doing research like this for years, asking women and men to rate their pain.

MADEY: It's hot.

NEIGHMOND: The findings, he says, are consistent in his studies and in other pain research.

FILLINGIM: Women report the same stimulus⁴ to be more painful than men do.

NEIGHMOND: For pain researchers like Fillingim, pinpointing⁵ how and why men and women respond differently to pain is an important first step toward finding more effective treatments.

FILLINGIM: We may ultimately need pink and blue pills. But in order to get there, we need to understand what the mechanisms⁶ are that are female-specific or male-specific so that we can design more personalized therapies that are going to help reduce pain for women and men.

NEIGHMOND: Which would be a welcome development, says psychologist Carolyn Mazure with Yale School of Medicine, who says despite so many advances in medicine, women experience more painful conditions than men.

CAROLYN MAZURE: Women are more likely to have, for example, chronic⁷ headache. Women are more likely to have lower back pain, neck pain. So whether or not women report pain more or have pain more, I think we could say that both may be true.

NEIGHMOND: And when women go to the doctor, studies show they're more likely to be prescribed opioids than men. Mazure says this can be especially dangerous.

MAZURE: That progression from substance use to addiction⁸ is more rapid for women than it is for men. We know that with regard to opioids, cocaine⁹, alcohol, even smoking tobacco.

NEIGHMOND: In fact, federal data show more men die from drug overdose than women, but the rate of death among women is accelerating faster than among men. Mazure says that understanding the why behind differences in pain perception may be critical to coming up with better treatments. As it is now, pain researchers like Fillingim can only speculate. One reason, he says, may have to do with sex hormones¹⁰.

FILLINGIM: Women have both higher levels and fluctuations¹¹ in circulating estrogens and progesterone, and those may contribute to experiencing higher levels of pain, whereas men have higher levels of testosterone, which in some studies has been shown to be protective against pain or associated with lower pain sensitivity.

NEIGHMOND: It could also have to do with women's susceptibility to anxiety, depression and sadness, all of which increase sensitivity to pain. Now, one question researchers are starting to look into is whether transitioning from one sex to another makes a difference in how people perceive pain. There aren't many studies, but Fillingim points to one.

FILLINGIM: Individuals transitioning from male to female tended to experience more pain after the transition, whereas going in the other direction, from female to male, there weren't many changes in pain after the transition.

NEIGHMOND: It's a fascinating new area of study, he says, one that will likely become increasingly important in coming years.

1 adept   

adj.老练的，精通的

参考例句：

• When it comes to photography,I'm not an adept.要说照相，我不是内行。
• He was highly adept at avoiding trouble.他十分善于避开麻烦。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

4 stimulus   

n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物

参考例句：

• Regard each failure as a stimulus to further efforts.把每次失利看成对进一步努力的激励。
• Light is a stimulus to growth in plants.光是促进植物生长的一个因素。

5 pinpointing   

准确地找出或描述( pinpoint的现在分词 )； 为…准确定位

参考例句：

• The difficulty of pinpointing primitive and derived characters remains. 要正确地指出原始性状和次生性状仍然感到困难。
• Pinpointing the true source of power in Japan is a notoriously slippery task. 要准确指出日本真正的权力来源，是一项非常困难的任务。

6 mechanisms   

n.机械( mechanism的名词复数 )；机械装置；[生物学] 机制；机械作用

参考例句：

• The research will provide direct insight into molecular mechanisms. 这项研究将使人能够直接地了解分子的机理。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He explained how the two mechanisms worked. 他解释这两台机械装置是如何工作的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 chronic   

adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的

参考例句：

• Famine differs from chronic malnutrition.饥荒不同于慢性营养不良。
• Chronic poisoning may lead to death from inanition.慢性中毒也可能由虚弱导致死亡。

8 addiction   

n.上瘾入迷，嗜好

参考例句：

• He stole money from his parents to feed his addiction.他从父母那儿偷钱以满足自己的嗜好。
• Areas of drug dealing are hellholes of addiction,poverty and murder.贩卖毒品的地区往往是吸毒上瘾、贫困和发生谋杀的地方。

9 cocaine   

n.可卡因，古柯碱（用作局部麻醉剂）

参考例句：

• That young man is a cocaine addict.那个年轻人吸食可卡因成瘾。
• Don't have cocaine abusively.不可滥服古柯碱。

10 hormones   

n. 荷尔蒙，激素 名词hormone的复数形式

参考例句：

• This hormone interacts closely with other hormones in the body. 这种荷尔蒙与体內其他荷尔蒙紧密地相互作用。
• The adrenals produce a large per cent of a man's sex hormones. 肾上腺分泌人体的大部分性激素。

11 fluctuations   

波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He showed the price fluctuations in a statistical table. 他用统计表显示价格的波动。
• There were so many unpredictable fluctuations on the Stock Exchange. 股票市场瞬息万变。