While it is well established that acute stress can produce antinociception, a phenomenon
referred to as stress-induced analgesia, repeated exposure to stress can have the opposite
effect. Since, chronic pain syndromes, such as fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, may be
triggered and/or exacerbated by chronic stress, we have evaluated the effect of repeated
stress on mechanical nociceptive threshold and inflammatory hyperalgesia. Using the
Randall–Selitto paw pressure test to quantify nociceptive threshold in the rat, we found that …