Are Pain Reports as well as Autonomic and Motor Reflex Responses Changed in Parallel while Ageing?

Most studies of experimentally induced pain revealed an increase of pain threshold and a decrease of tolerance threshold in the elderly. Physiological indicators have not yet been studied and compared with the verbal reports very often. Therefore, we intended to find out whether the assumed changes in the pain report are similar to the nociceptive evoked autonomic and reflex responses. Forty healthy young persons (age: 24.2±3.2 years) were compared to forty healthy elderly persons (age: 70.7±5.0 years). At first, the nociceptive flexion reflex (NFR) threshold was assessed by applying electrical suralis stimulati…