Relationship between thresholds to thermally and to mechanically induced pain in patients with eating disorders and healthy subjects

This paper presents the results of a correlation analysis comparing thresholds to thermally and to mechanically induced pain in 40 patients with eating disorders and 32 healthy control subjects. The correlation coefficients for the response to the two modalities of pain were 0.498 for the whole sample, 0.430 for the healthy subjects, and 0.402 for the patients with eating disorders. Although these results indicate a significant overlap in the individuals' responses to the two modalities of induced pain, the criterion suggested by Janal et al. (Pain, 58 (1994) 403-411) of a 'minimum correlation of 0.5 (that) would justify allowing one test to be considered equivalent to another' is not met.