Papers of the Week

Chronic pain is a debilitating condition of multifactorial origin, often without physical findings to explain the presenting symptoms. Of the possible etiologies of persisting painful symptoms, somatoform disorders and functional somatic syndromes (FSS) are among the most challenging, with a prevalence of 8-20%. Many different somatoform disorders and FSS have overlapping symptoms, with pain being the most prevalent one. The concept of multisomatoform disorder (MSD) has been developed to acknowledge that fact. We hypothesized that the concept of MSD will be reflected in a distinct sensory profile of patients compared with healthy controls and possibly provide insight into the type and pathophysiology of the pain commonly experienced by patients.