My joints hurt when the weather changes!

Although there is not an overwhelming body of evidence as regrettably Mother Nature does not fund clinical trials, there are some pretty solid human studies. There have been studies related to low back pain, osteoarthritis (OA) in multiple joints and rheumatoid arthritis. The consensus of these studies is that barometric pressure is directly associated with increases in osteoarthritis joint pain. Overall there is an inverse relationship; as barometric pressure decreases, pain increases. Some subsets of the population have a greater change in pain than others and this appears to be true of both patients with osteoarthritis and other forms of arthritis. One exception to decreased pressure increasing pain was reported in a 2003 study published in Rheumatology (Oxford). The study discovered that “…among women with hand OA, higher pain was significantly associated with days of rising barometric pressure (P<0.001).” coefficient =" 1.14," p =" .02," temperature =" -0.01," p =" .004;" n="154)">/=5 hPa/h and >/=10 hPa/h and magnitudes of decompression >/=5 hPa and >/=10 hPa augmented pain-related behaviors in SNL and CCI rats, respectively. These results indicate that LP within the range of natural weather patterns augments neuropathic pain in rats, and that SNL rats are more sensitive to LP than CCI rats.

Lowering barometric pressure aggravates mechanical allodynia and hyperalgesia in a rat model of neuropathic pain. [LINK]

Neurosci Lett. 1999 Apr 30;266(1):21-4.

Sato J, Morimae H, Seino Y, Kobayashi T, Suzuki N, Mizumura K.
Department of Neural Regulation, Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Nagoya University, Japan. jun@riem.nagoya-u.ac.jp

To examine the effects of meteorological change on the pain-related behaviors of neuropathic rats, animals with a chronic constriction injury (CCI) to the sciatic nerve were exposed to low barometric pressure (LP), 20 mmHg below the natural atmospheric pressure in a climate-controlled room. CCI caused a decreased hindpaw withdrawal threshold to von Frey hair (VFH) stimulation (mechanical allodynia) and prolonged duration of hindpaw withdrawal in response to pinprick stimulation (mechanical hyperalgesia). When the CCI rats were exposed to LP, both these pain-related behaviors were aggravated, whereas no change was seen in a group of controls. In the CCI rats sympathectomy inhibited this LP-induced augmentation of pain-related behaviors. These results show that LP intensifies the abnormalities in the pain-related behaviors of neuropathic rats, and that sympathetic activity contributes to the LP effect.