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Updated: Mar 27, 2026

Determining heat and mechanical pain threshold in inflamed skin of human subjects
Published on: January 14, 2009
Salivary Alpha-Amylase Correlates with Subjective Heat Pain Perception
Amrei Wittwer1, Peter Krummenacher2, Roberto La Marca3
1*Collegium Helveticum, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland wittwer@collegium.ethz.ch.
Objective:
Self-reports of pain are important for an adequate therapy. This is a problem with patients and infants who are restricted in providing an accurate verbal estimation of their pain. Reliable, real-time, economical, and non-invasive physiological correlates might contribute to a more comprehensive description of pain. Salivary alpha-amylase constitutes one candidate biomarker, which reflects predominantly sympathetic nervous system alterations under stressful conditions and can be measured non-invasively. The current study investigated the effects of acute heat pain on salivary alpha-amylase activity.
Methods:
Heat pain tolerance was measured on the non-dominant forearm. Participants completed visual analog scales on pain intensity and unpleasantness. Saliva samples were collected directly after pain induction.
Subjects:
Twenty-seven healthy volunteers were recruited for this study.
Results:
While salivary alpha-amylase levels correlated positively with intensity and unpleasantness ratings in response to acute heat pain stimuli, there was no corresponding association with pain tolerance.
Conclusions:
Salivary alpha-amylase is suggested to be an indirect physiologic correlate of subjective heat pain perception. Future studies should address the role of salivary alpha-amylase depending on the origin of pain, the concerned tissue, and other pain assessment methods.
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