Can Anxious Moms Influence Kids' Pain?

May 10, 2005 — -- Twelve-year-old Jenna Gale was always on the go -- skateboarding, bike riding and playing with her fraternal twin sister, Caila. But one day, Jenna was mysteriously wracked with pain.

Caila remembers her sister's pain. "She'd be like, 'Ow! My knee hurts! When the air touches it, it really hurts.' And I'd just be like, 'Are you exaggerating, Jenna?'"

But Jenna wasn't exaggerating. She could barely stand -- she used crutches and then a wheelchair -- and missed school for months.

And the pain spread. "First it was in my knee, then it was it my shoulder and then it went to my head," Jenna said.

When it comes to chronic pain, the issues and questions are different for children. Because children may have a harder time communicating, determining the cause of a child's pain can be difficult for doctors.

Dr. Lonnie Zeltzer founded the Pediatric Pain Program at UCLA's Mattel Children's Hospital where Jenna and hundreds of other young patients are being tested for reactions to pain as part of a federally funded study.

Zeltzer's researchers are finding that, after the age of 13, tolerance for pain tends to increase for boys, while it decreases for girls. They believe this difference may be because boys' and girls' brains are wired differently.

The study also concludes that a mother's anxiety about her own pain and her child's pain may contribute to an adolescent girl developing chronic pain. But the researchers say that is less likely to happen with mothers and their adolescent sons.

Jenna's diagnosis was "complex regional pain syndrome." But what triggered it is still a mystery.

Jenna Gale's mother, Debra, is recovering from 10 years of chronic fatigue syndrome and wonders whether Jenna's long exposure to her mom's condition could have played a role in the development of her chronic pain.

Zeltzer has seen the phenomenon before. Kellee Meyers, the mother of another of her young patients, admits she's anxious about her own pain from numerous surgeries and worries that her daughter, Haley, will develop the same "cycle of pain."

Haley, 7, is already being treated by Zeltzer for sleep problems.