Tag Archives: @PAINthejournal

Mass General Study Evaluates AI Models of Pain Management For Racial, Ethnic or Sex Bias

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Marc D. Succi, MD
Strategic Innovation Leader | Mass General Brigham Innovation
Associate Chair of Innovation & Commercialization | Mass General Brigham Enterprise Radiology
Co-Director, Innovator Growth Division, Mass General Brigham Innovation
Attending Radiologist | Mass General Emergency Radiology 
Assistant Professor of Radiology | Harvard Medical School
Executive Director, Mass General Brigham MESH Incubator

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: This study investigates whether large language models (LLMs), such as GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini, introduce racial, ethnic, or sex-based bias when recommending opioid treatments for pain management. Existing literature highlights racial disparities in pain treatment, with Black patients often receiving less aggressive pain management compared to White patients.

LLMs, as AI tools trained on large datasets, may either perpetuate these biases or help standardize treatment across diverse patient groups. This study analyzed hundreds of real-world patient cases, representing various pain conditions, to assess if race, ethnicity, or sex influenced the LLMs’ opioid treatment recommendations.

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Adolescents View Overwhelming Lack of Empathy for Popular TV Characters Experiencing Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Melanie Noel, PhD, RPsych
Professor of Clinical Psychology
University of Calgary
Full Member of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute and
Hotchkiss Brain Institute
Director, Alberta Children’s Pain Research Lab
at the Vi Riddell Pain & Rehabilitation Centre
Alberta Children’s Hospital in Canada.

PainRelief.com: What are the main findings of the study?

Response: We examined 10 movies and the first seasons of 6 TV Netflix shows based on popularity among adolescents.  

Across the 616 scenes showing painful events, the majority showed violence and injuries and not the kinds of pain kids experience in real life (e.g., medical procedures, chronic pain. Characters from marginalized (gender diverse, girls) and minoritized groups (individuals with racialized identities) were underrepresented.

Overall, there was an overwhelming LACK of empathy shown to characters observing others in pain. The media perpetuated gender and racialized stereotypes.

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Virgina Tech Study Demonstrates Focused Brain Ultrasound Can Reduce Both Pain Perception and Response to Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Wynn Legon, Ph.D.
Assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and in the
School of Neuroscience in Virginia Tech’s College of Science.
The Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, located in Roanoke, Virginia, is a top-level research institute of Virginia Tech.

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: My lab is focused on identifying new indications for which low-intensity focused ultrasound, or LIFU, might provide a benefit. In particular, we are focused on the insula and dorsal anterior cingulate, areas deep inside the brain implicated in a range of conditions. Chronic pain is among these.

These two papers provide proof-of-principle to confirm that focused ultrasound energy applied to these regions can impact both the perception of pain and the body’s reaction to a painful stimulus. Participants in the studies reported a reduction in perceived pain that depended on which site was targeted. Further, the application of low-intensity focused ultrasound also reduced physical responses to pain as measured by heart rate variability, again depending on which site was targeted.

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Racial Differences in Chronic Pain Among Football Players

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Robert R Edwards, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anaesthesia
Pain Management Center
Brigham and Women’s Hospital

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Chronic pain affects over 100 million American adults, and is a leading cause of reduced quality of life. However, in the US, the of burden of pain falls most heavily on members of racial and ethnic minority groups who frequently report more pervasive and severe pain compared with those in the majority.

In this study we evaluated race differences in pain among nearly 4,000 former professional American-style football players who self-identified as either Black or white.

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