Lessons learned - Moving on from QST sensory profiles

Abstract

Quantitative sensory testing (QST) has been optimized to diagnose in particular small fiber neuropathy and has been successfully used for decades. “Sensory phenotypes” have been derived from the QST data in an attempt to stratify patients with chronic pain and to gain mechanistic insights. However, studies consistently show that there is no difference in sensory phenotypes between neuropathy patients with and without pain and no successful stratification has been shown using the current version of “sensory phenotypes”. Thus, after falsification of the initial hypothesis it is time to focus on more promising approaches.