A Quantitative Sensory Testing Approach to Pain in Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Sarah Vaughan, Francis McGlone, Helen Poole and 1 others
PMID 30771132WHAT IT FOUND
In 13 autistic adults and 13 matched controls, lab pain tests showed no consistent group difference.
Autistic adults needed stronger touch and pinprick stimuli to detect or feel pain, and individual patterns varied widely.
Key findings
01Autistic adults needed more force to detect light touch (8.238 versus 3.267 mN) and more force to report mechanical pain (125.596 versus 46.687 mN) than controls.
02Cold pain threshold, cold pain tolerance, and the size of pressure pain modulation by cold did not differ between groups.
03The autistic group had more individual scores outside healthy norms: 32 abnormal scores across all 13 autistic participants, versus 16 across six controls.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Only 13 autistic adults and 13 controls were tested, so the findings are limited and may not apply to larger groups. The sample included only adults with IQ above 70 and without anxiety, depression, chronic pain, epilepsy, asthma, or eczema, so it says nothing about children, lower IQ, or common co-occurring conditions. Controls were not directly IQ tested. The paper gives conflicting statements about whether the mechanical detection group mean is clinically abnormal. The tests were short laboratory stimuli, not everyday pain, and no intervention was tested.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that autistic people generally feel less pain. The significant group differences were for mechanical touch and mechanical pain thresholds, while cold pain and pain modulation did not differ, and the paper tested no treatment.