Tender Point Examination in Women With Vulvar Vestibulitis Syndrome
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To examine whether generalized pain sensitivity in women with vulvar vestibulitis syndrome (VVS) is increased, suggestive of altered pain processing at the level of the central nervous system, and to investigate pain history and other pain measures in women with VVS. METHODS: Sixteen women with VVS and 16 age-matched (+/-3 years) and oral contraceptive status-matched (yes or no) control women participated in this cross-sectional study. The TP examination, typically used in the diagnosis of FMS, consists of the palpation of 9 bilateral nonvulvar areas by a blinded rheumatologist and was the main measure of generalized sensitivity. Pain intensity and unpleasantness rating (0 to 10) were recorded after each palpation. In addition, nonvulvar pain history, pain interference, catastrophizing, and anxiety were assessed via questionnaires. RESULTS: Women with VVS had significantly more painful TPs than nonaffected women; they reported significantly higher pain intensity and unpleasantness ratings and displayed more pain behaviors than controls (P<0.05). Furthermore, VVS patients reported having experienced more pain problems and associated interference, they catastrophized more in response to vulvar and nonvulvar pain, and they had higher levels of trait anxiety than controls (P<0.05). DISCUSSION: These results are consistent with recent findings of generalized sensitivity and heightened responses to pain in women with VVS. These results suggest that the mechanisms involved in VVS may include those that are genital specific in addition to those that are more generalized, and possibly centrally mediated.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".