Scherrer hopes further studies will lead to improved pain management
Patients who increased doses of opioid medicines to manage chronic pain were more likely to experience an increase in depression, according to Saint Louis University findings in Pain.
The study, "Change in opioid dose and change in depression in a longitudinal primary care patient cohort," appears in the February 2015 edition of the journal. The study expands the authors' findings in a previous study of Veterans Administration (VA) patients.
Jeffrey Scherrer, Ph.D., associate professor for family and community medicine at Saint Louis University, and his colleagues studied questionnaires from 355 patients from nine practices in the Residency Research Network of Texas who reported chronic low back pain initially and at one-year and two-year follow ups.
