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. 2022 Feb 15:21:100431.
doi: 10.1016/j.bbih.2022.100431. eCollection 2022 May.

Individuals with both higher recent negative affect and physical pain have higher levels of C-reactive protein

Jennifer Graham-Engeland  1 , Natasha N DeMeo  1 , Dusti R Jones  1 , Ambika Mathur  1 , Joshua M Smyth  1   2 , Martin J Sliwinski  3   4 , Megan E McGrady  1 , Richard B Lipton  5   6   7 , Mindy J Katz  6 , Christopher G Engeland  1   8
Affiliations

Individuals with both higher recent negative affect and physical pain have higher levels of C-reactive protein

Jennifer Graham-Engeland et al. Brain Behav Immun Health. .

Abstract

Conceptualizing physical pain and negative affect as potentially interactive, we hypothesized that higher levels of peripheral inflammatory markers would be observed consistently only among individuals with both higher negative affect and pain symptomatology. Participants were generally healthy midlife adults from the Bronx, NY (N ​= ​212, M age ​= ​46.77; 60.8% Black, 25.5% Hispanic/Latina/o) recruited as part of a larger study. Key measures were: reported pain intensity and pain interference at baseline, recent negative affect averaged from self-reports 5x/day for 7 days, and peripheral inflammatory markers (C-reactive protein [CRP] and a composite cytokine measure based on seven cytokines). Controlling for age, BMI, gender, and education, recent negative affect significantly interacted with both pain variables to explain variance in CRP, with higher CRP levels observed only in individuals with both higher negative affect and either higher pain intensity or pain interference. These findings contribute to an emerging literature suggesting that negative affect, pain, and inflammation are related in important and complex ways.

Keywords: CRP; Cytokine; Inflammation; Mood; Negative affect; Pain.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Interactive effects of levels of recent negative affect (“NA” in the figure) on the association between CRP and recent A) pain intensity and B) pain interference. Analyses were run using continuous data. As shown in 1A there was a positive association between pain intensity and CRP for participants who reported higher levels of recent negative affect (+1 SD above the mean, purple, broken line); there was not a significant association between pain intensity and CRP for those who had recent negative affect levels at or below the average of the sample. Similarly, as shown in 1B there was a positive association between pain interference and CRP for participants who reported higher levels of recent negative affect (+1 SD above the mean, purple, broken line) and there was not a significant association between pain interference and CRP for those who had negative affect levels at or below the average of the sample. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
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