Associations between frequent pain or headaches and neurobehavioral symptoms by gender and TBI severity.
Karen J Meltzer, Shannon B Juengst
PMID 33395320WHAT IT FOUND
Adults with TBI reported more frequent symptoms overall.
Adults with frequent pain or headaches reported more mood, fatigue, and thinking symptoms. Women reported pain most often, and transgender or other gender participants reported the most mood and fatigue symptoms.
Key findings
01Frequent pain or headaches were reported by 23% of participants overall, and women were the group reporting pain or headaches most often (31.4%).
02Participants with TBI reported more frequent symptoms than participants without TBI, and participants with frequent pain or headaches reported more negative affect, executive function, and fatigue symptoms.
03Transgender or other gender participants reported more negative affect and fatigue symptoms than both women and men, and more impulsivity symptoms than women.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study is an anonymous self-report survey, so pain, TBI history, severity, and symptoms were not clinically confirmed. The design cannot show that pain or TBI caused the reported symptoms. Subgroup sizes became small when gender, pain experience, and TBI severity were combined, limiting conclusions for mild and moderate-severe TBI. The transgender or other gender group was very small and age-limited, so comparisons with men and women may have been influenced by age. The BAST Executive Function subscale captures self-reported behavioral symptoms, not a direct assessment of cognitive ability or impairment.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these findings as showing that pain causes worse TBI symptoms or that a specific treatment works. The study is an anonymous self-report survey, and subgroup differences, especially for transgender or other gender participants, may reflect small sample size, age differences, or reporting bias.