This study investigated the differences in psychological characteristics between people with knee OA living in Japan and Australia. Pain catastrophizing was higher in the participants from Japan and the difference was accounted for by higher ‘rumination’ and ‘helplessness’ rather than by ‘magnification’. On the other hand, depressive symptoms and fear of movement did not appear to be different. Our hypothesis that people from Japan would have greater levels of psychological impairments was partially supported by the findings in this study. Of note, the two cohorts reported similar levels of pain but differed in terms of age, BMI and physical function.
Depressive symptoms
No significant difference was found in depressive symptoms between the two groups. In addition, 95% CI of mean difference between Japanese and Australian groups in depression subscale of the DASS was within the range of the equivalence margin. This result indicates that depressive symptoms among people from Japan and Australia with similar levels of pain from knee OA are equivalent. This is in contrast to a previous study that demonstrated significantly higher depressive symptoms using the Geriatric Depression Scale in community-dwelling older Japanese than Australians, even after controlling for lifestyle and health factors associated with depressive symptoms [20]. Mean scores were notably low in both cohorts (4.9 and 4.2 out of 42 for participants from Japan and Australia respectively). Both Japanese and Australian cohort excluded people who scored more than 21 points on the depression subscale of the DASS-21 [26]. This meant that participants’ levels of depressive symptoms were limited to the normal to moderate range [38], which may have influenced the findings. The lower BMI and better physical functioning among the participants from Japan may explain lower than expected levels of depressive symptoms relative to the comparison group, and the contrast between our findings and the previous comparison [20].
Fear of movement
Fear of movement did not present as being different between people with knee OA from Japan and Australia, although the lower limit of 95% CIs of mean differences in BFOMSO is slightly lower than lower equivalence margin of BFOMSO indicating uncertainty of equivalence. Given the association between pain and fear-avoidance in people with chronic pain [39], equivalence in fear of movement may be expected given the equivalence in pain levels between our two groups. Passive practitioner-dependent treatment approaches such as acupuncture, acupressure, and massage are commonly used in the treatment of musculoskeletal pain in Japan. We therefore hypothesized that people from Japan with knee OA would present higher fear of movement. Health professionals in many countries, including Japan, tend to advise people to rest in response to pain, rather than continue activity [15]. Advice to rest in response to pain may foster avoidance beliefs relating to pain [40], yet runs counter to evidence for effective knee OA management [41]. In recent years, the importance of exercise for musculoskeletal pain has become more widely known, including in Japan, and may be reflected in lower than expected fear of movement among the cohort from Japan. Further, the cohort from Australia were included on the basis of being inactive or insufficiently inactive, which may have selectively biased that cohort to have higher levels of fear of movement.
Pain catastrophizing
Pain catastrophizing levels were significantly higher in the people from Japan, despite similar pain intensity. Pain catastrophizing is well known to be associated with the intensity of pain [42]. In a previous study comparing pain catastrophizing in ethnic Asian people with ethnic Westerners, Chinese-Canadians similarly reported higher pain catastrophizing scores than European-Canadians despite no difference in pain intensity from an induced painful stimulus [43]. The experience of pain is multifaceted. Sensory-discriminative aspects are those related to the location, intensity, and duration of painful stimuli, while affective-motivational aspects relate to how pain is qualitatively experienced [43, 44]. Several studies indicate that ethnic differences in pain experiences may be most apparent for the affective-motivational aspects as these are more influenced by psychosocial factors than the sensory-discriminative aspects such as pain intensity [45-47]. Thus, there appears to be psychosocial differences related to geographical location, culture and/or ethnicity that may explain these findings of different levels of reported catastrophizing.
One theory of catastrophizing is that it is a manifestation of a broader dimension of a ‘communal’ approach to coping, whereby a person in pain catastrophizes in order to garner interpersonal or social help as part of their coping strategy [42]. Catastrophizing may serve a social communicative function aimed toward maximizing the probability that distress will be managed within a social or interpersonal context rather than an individualistic context [48, 49]. Thus, greater catastrophizing may be associated with ‘interdependence orientation’ rather than ‘independence orientation’. Japanese culture emphasizes interdependence rather than independence compared to Western culture [50]. This cultural difference is one possible explanation for the difference in PCS identified in our study.
On the other hand, Japanese people consider pain behaviors such as crying or showing pain, to be less acceptable than do Western people [51]. Japanese traditionally place emphasis on stoicism and the concealing pain and emotions, while Western culture places greater emphasis on the expression of personal feelings. This could imply that people from Japan would score lower on pain catastrophizing. We can only speculate that people from Japan may tend to conceal pain behaviours while at the same time experiencing catastrophic cognitions.
The PCS subscales of rumination and helplessness appear to be higher in people with knee OA from Japan than from Australia. On the other hand, magnification did not present as being different, although with some degree of uncertainty. The subscales of rumination and helplessness are thought to become more important for longer term pain, while magnification is the predominant catastrophic cognition when pain and injury are more recent [42]. This would support our finding since knee OA is a chronic painful condition. We might also speculate that Japanese people might report greater feelings of helplessness related to chronic pain from knee OA because of lower personal control and self-efficacy for pain management.
Physical function
Physical function was significantly more impaired in the participants from Australia when compared to those from Japan. This is despite pain, depressive symptoms and fear of movement being equivalent and pain catastrophizing being greater among participants from Japan. This finding was unexpected given previous studies have reported that depressive symptoms and fear-avoidance, along with pain severity, are associated with self-reported physical function [52-54]. The finding may be explained by the difference in BMI which was higher in the Australian cohort and is also negatively associated with self-reported function [55]. In addition, our finding is consistent with a finding that Japanese low back pain patients were significantly less impaired in functioning than American low back pain patients, despite similar pain and physical impairment findings [56].
Limitations
This study has several limitations. First, the participants from Japan were recruited from an outpatient setting at one hospital, while Australian participants were recruited from the community via a variety of sources, such as advertisements and social media. Another important difference in the recruitment was the exclusion of people who were ‘sufficiently physically active’ (according to Active Australia Survey) from the Australian cohort. Despite this exclusion criteria however, participants from Australia were found to be quite active [8]. Diagnosis was based on radiographic findings for the people in Japan, but from clinical criteria for the people in Australia. The Australian cohort were younger but had higher BMI than the people from Japan. Nevertheless, pain levels were similar for both groups. The second potential limitation is the comparability of the translation of the Japanese version of the depression subscale of DASS-21 used in the study, since validity (including cross-cultural) and reliability have not yet been reported. Differences in validity and reliability between the versions may impact on findings.