Abstract D044: Age and sex effects on quantitative sensory testing values in healthy African American adults

Introduction: Only a few studies have reported quantitative sensory testing (QST) reference values for healthy African Americans, and those studies are limited in sample size and range of age of participants. The intent of our study was to fill a gap in the understanding of pain and somatosensory function in African Americans by generating QST values for healthy African American adults. In a large cohort of pain-free, healthy African American adults whose past pain experiences and current psychological status were known, our study aim was to determine thermal and mechanical QST values and compare those values at the anterior forearm by age and sex. We also determined the values for 5 other body sites and compared the values for differences by testing site location (upper body versus lower body). Methodology: In this cross-sectional study, 124 pain-free African American adults (age 18 to 69 years, 49% female) completed demographic and self-reported pain, fatigue and psychosocial measures. QST included obtaining thermal and mechanical responses and associated pain intensity levels. We applied the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure to adjust the p values to account for the multiple t tests. Results: We found thermal detection values at the anterior forearm were (29.2°C±1.6) for cool detection (CD) and (34.5°C±1.2) for warm detection (WD). At that site, pain thresholds were: cold pain threshold (CPTh) (26.3°C±5.0), heat pain threshold (HPTh) (37.8°C±3.6), and mechanical pain thresholds (MPTH) (16.7±22.2 grams of force, gF). There was a significant between sex difference for WD, with women being more sensitive (q=0.027). Lower body sites were less sensitive than upper body sites across all thermal modalities (q Citation Format: Keesha L. Powell-Roach, Starja Q. Booker, Yingwei Yao, Marie L. Suarez, Miriam O. Ezenwa, Roger B. Fillingim, Zaijie J. Wang, Robert E. Molokie, Diana J. Wilkie. Age and sex effects on quantitative sensory testing values in healthy African American adults [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2019 Sep 20-23; San Francisco, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(6 Suppl_2):Abstract nr D044.