Background and Aims:
Individuals affected by Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) show a low tolerance to endogenous chronic pain, with a tendency to abuse of anti-inflammatories. However, within these aspects, BPD patients have rarely been compared with major psychiatric disorders and healthy controls.
The study aims to compare BPD individuals with patients with Psychosis (P), Affective Disorder (AD) and Healthy Controls (HC) in the presence of musculoskeletal pain and in the anti-inflammatory/analgesic abuse.
Methods:
A sample of 112 subjects without diagnosis of osteoarthritis was collected. The whole sample was divided in four groups: 27 (24.1%) subjects with BPD, 27 (24.1%) with P (Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorderand Delusional Disorder), 25 (22.3%) with AD (Unipolar Depression and Bipolar Disorder) and 33 (29.5%) HC. Using chi-squared test and logistic regressions, BPD were compared with the other groups in: presence of headache, back pain, joint pain; intensity of pain during the assessment and within the week before the assessment; subjective experience of pain and the abuse of anti-inflammatories and analgesics.
Results:
Considering separately the pain variables, BPD exhibit headache and joint pain more frequently than the other groups. With respect to P and AD patients, BPD individuals have a strong subjective experience of pain and refer a more severe intensity of pain both during the assessment and during the week before. BPD subjects resulted to abuse more frequently of anti-inflammatory and analgesics than the other groups.
Conclusions:
Consistently with literature, in our sample BPD patients seem to over-experience endogenouspain, with a tendency of anti-inflammatory abuse.

11 - PAIN AND ANTI-INFLAMMATORY ABUSE IN BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER, MAJOR PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS AND HEALTHY CONTROLS