Different Races Feel Pain Differently

Posting Date: 10/01/2003

For instance, co-author Knox Todd, M.D., MPH, of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, presents results from emergency medicine studies that showed Hispanics with broken bones in their arms or legs were twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to go without pain medication in their emergency department visits, even after differences in language, gender and insurance status were taken into account.

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Another co-author, Karen O. Anderson, Ph.D., of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, cited studies in cancer pain. One study showed that Hispanics and African Americans with cancer were less likely to be assessed for pain, and did not receive the level of pain medications recommended by the World Health Organization. Another study showed that African American cancer patients in nursing homes had a 64 percent greater chance of receiving no pain treatment than did non-Hispanic whites.

The report also draws on Green?s own work in the area of chronic pain, including her recently published findings that, regardless of their age, African-Americans with chronic non-cancer pain from any source suffered more psychological and physical effects than non-Hispanic whites with chronic non-cancer pain.

In addition to these clinical pain studies, the authors describe the racial and ethnic differences in pain sensitivity and pain response that have been found in numerous experiments. For instance, scientists using pressure, heat or cold to induce pain have found that African-Americans and Hispanics tend to have lower thresholds of pain tolerance. Other studies have found that pain-study participants from Nepal and India had higher pain tolerances than Western counterparts.

Taken together, these findings suggest that something in the brain?s pain-processing and pain-killing systems may vary by race and ethnicity. But more studies are needed to know for sure, writes co-author Roger Fillingim, Ph.D., of the University of Florida College of Dentistry.