101. Serum chemokine concentrations are associated with pain and anxiety after acute injury

Abstract

Many chronic pain and psychiatric conditions are associated with changes in the concentrations of cytokines. Cytokine concentrations may also be associated with pain and mood during early recovery after injury. We aimed to investigate this in people after acute orthopaedic trauma. We tested 240 randomly selected serum samples obtained from a cohort of patients enrolled in a larger project investigating recovery following wrist fractures. Patients (18–75 years old) were prospectively recruited from three tertiary hospital outpatient clinics in Sydney, Australia. All participants were interviewed and completed validated questionnaires; 78% of participants also consented to a blood test. Serum cytokine concentrations were measured using a human 25-plex panel and luminex technology. In the primary analysis, regression models investigated the relationship between a priori -nominated cytokines and pain, depression, anxiety, stress, and quality of sleep. Pain was positively associated with increased systemic concentrations of CCL5 ( r = 0.25 p < 0.0001), CCL11 ( r = 0.25 p < 0.01), CXCL10 ( r = 0.22 p < 0.05), and CCL2 ( r = 0.22 p < 0.01); and anxiety was positively associated with an increased concentration of IL8 ( r = 0.19 p < 0.01). Secondary exploratory analyses identified other significant correlations between cytokine concentrations and symptoms that will be tested in future work. We conclude that serum concentrations of CCL5, CCL11, CXCL10 and IL8 are associated with pain and anxiety after fracture. Future research should test whether the concentrations of cytokines influence the course of recovery.