BMJ  2006;332:781-782 (1 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7544.781

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Alison Tonks, associate editor

atonks@bmj.com

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

It's been clear for a long time that men and women experience pain differently. Women get painful conditions such as fibromyalgia more often than men and are much more likely consult a doctor when they do, for example. Until recently, doctors tended to undertreat or even dismiss women's pain, putting women's complaining down to a lack of moral fibre or to emotion.

But a recent review of pain research finds mounting evidence that women feel pain differently from men because they have different neurophysiology (moderated by different receptors) and different neurochemicals. Scientists have already found one gene that modulates pain in women but not men—the melanocortin-1 receptor gene, which is linked to red hair and fair skin.


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  		Credit: JAMA

 

Experiments in functional brain imaging are also emerging, showing that pain activates different areas of the brain in men and women. This has knock-on effects on the system generating endogenous opioids.


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  		. . . [Full text of this article]

 

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