Table 6.
Comparing Patients Grouped Based on Consulting Behavior for Pain Conditions Against Controls Concerning the Degree of Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Suppression Post-dexamethasone Suppression Test
| HPA-axis suppression post-DST | P-valuesa (vs controls) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
||||
| Hypersuppressors (cortisol < 130 nmol L−1) | Intermediate (cortisol 130–500 nmol L−1) | Hyposuppressors (cortisol > 500 nmol L−1) | ||
| Controls (n = 146, n [%]) | 14 (10) | 118 (80) | 14 (10) | |
| Patients who were consulters for lumbago (n = 19, n [%])b | 7 (37) | 12 (63) | 0 (0) | 0.006 |
| Patients who were non-consulters for lumbago (n = 49, n [%])b | 6 (12) | 35 (71) | 8 (16) | 0.320 |
| Patients who were consulters for neck pain (n = 13, n [%])b | 3 (23) | 9 (69) | 1 (8) | 0.250 |
| Patients who were non-consulters for neck pain (n = 55, n [%])b | 10 (18) | 38 (69) | 7 (13) | 0.170 |
| Patients who were consulters for chronic multifocal pain (n = 27, n [%])b | 7 (26) | 19 (70) | 1 (4) | 0.057 |
| Patients who were non-consulters for chronic multifocal pain (n = 41, n [%])b | 6 (15) | 28 (68) | 7 (17) | 0.200 |
All analyses are comparisons concerning the categorized post-DST cortisol distributions between each patient subgroups and the control sample.
Out of the 73 patients the medical records of 68 cases were deemed of sufficient quality concerning screening for consulters of pain conditions.
The controls consisted of 146 subjects. The lowest 10% (n = 14) and the highest 10% cutoffs (n = 14) of the post-dexamethasone suppression test (DST) cortisol values (< 130 nmol L−1 and > 500 nmol L−1 respectively) within the control sample were defined as hyper- and hyposuppression respectively and the remaining 80% (n = 118) were defined as having an intermediate hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis suppression.
Significance testing performed with Fisher’s exact test.