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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Sleep Sci 2019; 12(01): 49-52
DOI: 10.5935/1984-0063.20190055
Short Communications

The sensory pain of Dante's Inferno - Semantics of chronic pain in patients with narcolepsy

Renata Carvalho Cremaschi
1   UNIFESP, Departamento de Psicobiologia - São Paulo - SP - Brazil.
2   UNIFESP, Departamento de Neurologia e Psicobiologia - São Paulo - SP - Brazil.
,
Camila Hirotsu
1   UNIFESP, Departamento de Psicobiologia - São Paulo - SP - Brazil.
3   Lausanne University Hospital, Center for Investigation and Research in Sleep - Lausanne - Lausane - Switzerland.
,
Sergio Tufik
1   UNIFESP, Departamento de Psicobiologia - São Paulo - SP - Brazil.
,
Fernando Morgadinho Coelho
1   UNIFESP, Departamento de Psicobiologia - São Paulo - SP - Brazil.
2   UNIFESP, Departamento de Neurologia e Psicobiologia - São Paulo - SP - Brazil.
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Objective To examine the semantics of chronic pain in narcolepsy and to compare with the poem Inferno, from Dante Alighieri.

Methods A cross-sectional study, in which type 1 (n=33) and type 2 (n=33) patients (hypocretin-1 quantification in cerebrospinal fluid), were studied at Departamento de Psicobiologia - Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Brazil). We assessed pain descriptors in the Present Rating Index (PRI) from McGill Pain Questionnaire.

Results There was no significant difference in PRI between narcolepsy groups. In both groups, the most frequent words had a sensory dimension: throbbing, jumping, and tugging. Multiple correspondence analysis revealed the predominance of sensory descriptors and the deficiency of affective descriptors in these groups.

Discussion A study that interpreted the poem Inferno, from Dante Alighieri, as McGill Pain Questionnaires descriptors suggested a contribution of the sensory dimension in pain of possibly narcolepsy patients, similar as in our results.

Narcolepsy - Comorbidity - Chronic Pain - Literature


Publication History

Received: 08 September 2018

Accepted: 19 December 2018

Article published online:
31 October 2023

© 2023. Brazilian Sleep Association. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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