Current Research

Chronic neuropathic pain severely affects the quality of life of the individual patient and represents a major health issue for society with  considerable economic consequences, e.g. increased medical expenses and public pension expenditure.

Chronic pain is difficult to treat and can seldom be cured, but in many cases it can be reduced, and a means to improve the treatement is to increase our knowledge of the underlying mechanisms. 

The Danish Pain Research Center was founded with the primary aim to study chronic pain, in particular pain caused by damage to the central nervous system, defined by IASP as: Pain arising as a direct consequence of a lesion or disease affecting the somatosensory system (Treede et al., Neurology 2008).

The current focus areas are:

  • Deafferentation pain including postamputation pain, plexus avulsions and nerve injuries
     

  • Pain following traumatic musculoskeletal conditions, including whiplash injury
     

  • Pain following CNS lesions (stroke and spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis)
     

  • The sympathetic nervous system and pain
     

  • Pain and emotions

  • Pain and placebo analgesia
     

  • Study of brain plasticity using multi-modal imaging

  • Spinal cord stimulation

 

 
   Ongoing PhD projects
 

Else-Marie Jegindø
Pain and coping strategies in the religious mind
 

Henriette Klit:
Poststroke pain: Epidemiology, clinic and characteristics 
 

Bjarne Rittig-Rasmussen:
Neck pain: motor function and cortical plasticity
 

Emilia Horjales
Brain imaging studies on the relationship between pain and emotions
 

Caspar Skau Madsen
Assessment of small-fibre function experimentally and in patients with neuropathic pain
 

Anne Hansen
Persistent headache following stroke: epidemiology, characteristics and mechanisms
 

Kaare Meier
Spinal cord stimulation: experimental and clinical studies
 

Páll Karlsson
Determination of intraepidermal nerve fiber density and small fiber function in healthy men and in patients with neuropathy
 

Gitte Uldall Laue Petersen
Empirical studies of placebo effects in neuropathic pain conditions

 

Lise Ventzel
Neuropathy and pain following docetaxel and oxaplatin
 

Karen Lund
Experimental and clinical studies of pain and placebo analgesia
 

Jeanette Springer
Pain and sensory abnormality after thoracic surgery