Page 34 - University of Martland Nursing Forum - Winter 2017

DISCOVERY
Exercise and chronic pain: Not everyone gets same benefit, but why?
TBy Mark Hoeflich
he benefits of exercise on
managing chronic pain are well established, but why do people react differently to exercise as
a form of treatment?
A $2.7-million grant from the National
Institute of Nursing Research awarded to three University of Maryland School of Nursing faculty will support research aimed at finding some answers. Susan G. Dorsey, PhD ’98, RN, FAAN, professor and chair, Department of Pain and Translational Symptom Science; Cynthia Renn, PhD, MS ’98, RN, associate professor; and Barbara Resnick, PhD ’96,
32 WINTER 2017
RN, CRNP, FAANP, FAAN, professor and Sonia Ziporkin Gershowitz Chair in Gerontology, received the grant
to fund the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s (UMB) Omics Associated with Self-management Interventions for Symptoms (OASIS) Center.
“We don’t know what genetic and genomics factors contribute to an individual’s motivation, resilience, and capacity to engage in physical activity and exercise or the dose and intensity of these self-management approaches,” Dorsey says. “What’s more, we don’t know in whom it works and how.”
“You can have 10 patients and give them all the same exercise regimen to follow, but all 10 may not respond the same way,” Renn adds. “We are trying to get at what is different about people that makes them more or less motivated to self-manage their pain.”
Pain is a public health epidemic, according to the Institute of Medicine report Relieving Pain in America.
Chronic pain affects approximately
100 million U.S. adults, reducing
quality of life and costing $560 billion- $635 billion annually in medical expenses and lost productivity.
Dorsey
TRACY BROWN