Acute Pain Genomic Study

In preparation for future large-scale genome wide association studies, reliable methods must be developed for measuring perceived pain and for estimating the effects of potentially confounding factors such as appropriate covariates. The major objectives of our pilot investigation are to develop optimal methods to characterize the primary endpoint of the study-knee pain, and to gather preliminary data on genetic markers in the human genome that are associated with a certain pain phenotype. The specific issues for this study will be to carry out a preliminary gene association analysis of acute perioperative pain in individuals undergoing total knee replacement and to define a pain phenotype that is composed of multidimensional domains such as opioid consumption, inflammatory markers, anxiety level, degree of catastrophizing, etc. This pain phenotype has to be sensitive enough to pick up changes in pain experience that can be attributed to single nucleotide polymorphisms.