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APS Bulletin • Volume 18, Number 2, 2007
APS Update
APS Small Grants Program Is ‘Invaluable’
Jane Martinsons, Staff Writer
| “The APS grant was critical in catalyzing my research career because it gave me the seed money I needed to quickly get my research program started. Without it, it would have been a much longer process.” —Beth Darnall, PhD |  |
What does a small research grant from APS mean to a past recipient? “It’s been invaluable,” says Beth Darnall, PhD, Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, OR, who was awarded a grant in 2006 to study the immunologic response to in-vivo pain catastrophizing. “The APS grant was critical in catalyzing my research career because it gave me the seed money I needed to quickly get my research program started. Without it, it would have been a much longer process.”
Darnall’s research on the interface between the immune system and pain looks at how negative cognition, specifically pain catastrophizing, affects inflammation and pain processes. “Preliminary results support the role of cognition as an active component,” she says, “and suggest that catastrophizing-related low-grade systemic inflammation may contribute to the genesis, maintenance, and progression of pain.”
Darnall recently presented her findings at a Western Pain Society meeting and the APS 27th Annual Scientific Meeting in Tampa, FL. This month, she will present her work at the International Association for the Study of Pain in Glasgow, Scotland.
That study is serving as a springboard for further research. In January, Darnall received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) career development K-Award from the Office for Women’s Health Research to further examine the immune response to pain catastrophizing in women. The award will fund her research through 2012.
According to Darnall, women are two to nine times more likely to have a chronic pain condition than men, and suffer disproportionately in terms of pain intensity, duration of pain episodes, and frequency of pain episodes. Her upcoming research will “compare people’s biodata during a nonstress day to the pain catastrophizing experiment,” she says, “so basically, each person will be serving as their own control in this design.”
Her plans call for submitting an R-level application to NIH in fall 2009. “I’m excited about this work because research on stress responsivity and the longer-range physiological consequences of psychological and physical stress [will increase] our understanding of the mechanisms of chronic pain.”
Darnall emphasizes that APS’s continued support of junior investigators is important to future pain research, which she believes will focus on interdisciplinary research. “I really appreciate this part of APS’s mission,” she says. “The overall future of pain research is benefited by this continued investment,” particularly when government funding is diminishing just as pain prevalence is increasing.
Begun in 2005, the Small Research Grants Program recognizes the need for young investigators to get early funding for developing data that can later qualify for major NIH grant funding. Since 2006, APS has annually provided five grants of $20,000 each.
Editor’s note: This is the first article in an occasional series that will focus on recipients of the APS Small Grants Program.
