Study Links Pre-Operative Breast Cancer Pain to Inflammatory Mechanisms
American Pain SocietyResearchers from the University of California San Francisco studied a sample of women scheduled for breast cancer surgery and sought to determine the occurrence rate for preoperative breast pain, describe characteristics of the pain, evaluate the demographic and clinical variation in the women with preoperative pain, and assess the role of in pro-and anti inflammatory cytokine genes. They concluded that preoperative breast pain involves an inflammatory process and this information may help identify women who are at risk for preoperative breast pain. Their findings were published in The Journal of Pain.