This could mean that older adults could be at risk for developing chronic pain and may benefit from taking anti-inflammatories soon after an injury or procedure, according to the researchers.
Older adults often have a certain level of chronic inflammation in their bodies. But UF researchers found that when they induced pain in older adults, proteins associated with inflammation increased more than they did in younger participants and stayed in the bodies of older adults longer. The researchers also found that anti-inflammatory cytokines, proteins that soothe inflammation, peaked later for older adults than younger adults. They published their results were published in a previous issue of Experimental Gerontology.
“Older people go through painful procedures more often, and we wanted to research whether this accumulation of painful procedures or more acute pain episodes that older people encounter is bad,” said Yenisel Cruz-Almeida, Ph.D., MSPH, an assistant professor in the UF College of Medicine’s department of aging and geriatric research who also is affiliated with the UF Institute on Aging. “If you have enough of those in a shorter period of time, does this predispose you to have chronic pain?”