Background and aim: The presence of chronic pain is associated with impaired memory and processing speed, accelerating age-related cognitive decline. The aim of the present study was to achieve a better understanding of cognitive dysfunctions in a sample of middle-aged adults (from 40 to 65 years) with reported chronic pain. We hypothesize that people with chronic pain will have worst cognitive performance depending on age and the presence of multiple chronic pain sites. 

Method: One hundred thirty-three individuals reporting chronic pain and two hundred twenty-heigh healthy controls matched for age and education  from the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative (www.bbhi.cat) participated in the study. 
We explored the effects of age between younger-middle aged (40-54 years) and older-middle aged (55-65 years) in working memory and processing speed using a spatial-updating and a number of comparison tasks. 
We classified the presence of pain in three subgroups: no chronic pain, one chronic pain site or multiple chronic pain site (e.g. migraine and low back pain). 

 Results: Our results showed that performance in working memory was poorer in older middle-aged chronic pain groups compared to young controls without pain. In processing speed we found a main effect of age and post-hoc analyses revealed that young-middle aged with multiple chronic pain sites performed like older middle-aged groups.

Conclusion: Multiple chronic pain sites affects cognitive performance in young adults making them performs old-like. Early biopsychosocial management of pain in young middle-aged is especially important to promote healthy aging.

Chronic pain modulate cognitive performance in young adults