The COMT val158met polymorphism thus influences the human experience of pain and may underlie interindividual differences in the adaptation and responses to pain and other stressful stimuli.
A single nucleotide polymorphism (Val158Met) of COMT leads to a three to four fold reduction in the activity of the enzyme and has been associated to modifications in the response to a pain stressor.
The catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene contains a functional polymorphism, Val158Met, that has been found to influence human pain perception, and one study has found that migraine was less likely among those with the Val/Val polymorphism.
This suggests that the val(1</span>58)met SNP plays a primary role in variation in temporal summation of pai</span>n, but that other SNPs of the COMT haplotype exert a greater influence on resting nociceptive sensitivity.
Genetics-based personalized approaches to pain management have received a setback because of the nonreproducibility of functional genetic associations such as the pain-modulatory effect of the catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) gene 472G>A single-nucleotide polymorphism.
It is shown that a polymorphism in the COMT gene, Rs4680 (Val158Met), influence pain sensitivity in human experimental pain and the efficacy for morphine in cancer pain treatment.
Three common haplotypes of the human COMT gene, divergent in two synonymous and one nonsynonymous (val(158)met) position, designated as low (LPS), average (APS), and high pain sensitive (HPS), are associated with experimental pain sensitivity and risk of developing chronic musculoskeletal pain conditions.
More generally, apart from one report that focused on pain-induced opioid release, this is the first functional neuroimaging study showing an effect of the COMT val158met polymorphism on cerebral pain processing.
The findings provide multimeasure and multimethod support for genetic moderation of a maladaptive coping and pain process and suggest that genetic variation in the val(158)met polymorphism may affect fibromyalgia pain through pathways of pain-related cognition.
In the present study, we used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to investigate the brain response to heat pain stimuli in 54 subjects genotyped for the common COMT val158met polymorphism (val/val = n 22, val/met = n 20, met/met = n 12).
Thus, our data show that the val158met polymorphism in the COMT gene contributes significantly to inter-individual differences in neural pain processing: in healthy people, this polymorphism was more related to cognitive aspects of pain processing, whereas BPD patients with reduced pain sensitivity showed an association with activity in brain regions related to affective pain processing.
According with previous research, our findings revealed that haplotypes of the COMT gene and genotypes of the Val158Met polymorphism play a key role on pain sensitivity in FM patients.
This study suggests that the Val158Met COMT polymorphism modulated some psychological variables but not pressure pain sensitivity in FMS because women with FMS carrying the Met/Met genotype exhibit higher disability, depression, and anxiety than but similar PPTs to those with Val/Met and Val/Val genotypes.
Our results show that the COMT Val158Met polymorphism contributes to variability in pain sensitivity after cardiac surgery of morphine-treated patients in the intensive care unit, because Met-allele carriers were more sensitive to overall pain and procedure-related pain.
Current results indicated that the Val158Met polymorphism seems not to be a risk factor for the development of CTS; however, it was associated with increased perception of pain and higher disability scores.
Carriers of rs6269 AA, rs4633 TT, rs4818 CC, and rs4680 AA genotypes were characterized by the lowest preoperative scores related to pain intensity and lower pain intensity at 1 year after the surgery.
This study suggests that the Val158Met polymorphism is associated with the presence of pain in MS, but it is not a risk factor for MS itself because the presence of the Met/Met genotype was more prevalent in those patients with pain.