Companionship and social interaction could help patients recover more quickly from pain linked to nerve damage, according to a new study.

Simply being in the same room as another person has the potential to reduce stress, which in turn allows the body to heal quicker, neuroscientists found.

The findings are based on a study of mice which had recently undergone neurosurgery.

Some were left to recover in a cage alone whilst others were given a companion.

Those kept near to other mice suffered less nerve-related pain, called allodynia, and a quicker rate of recovery from inflammation than their lonely counterparts, researchers from Ohio State University found.

Adam Hinzey, lead author of the study, said: "If they were alone and had stress, the animals had increased inflammation and allodynia behaviour.

"If the mice had a social partner, both allodynia and inflammation were reduced."

Millions of people suffer from the nerve pain known as peripheral neuropathy, which is often connected to diabetes, trauma and spinal cord injury. The skin can become so sensitive that even a gentle breeze can prove painful.

Few treatments for such sensory pain are currently available and the researchers hope the study could aid their development.

"A better understanding of social interaction's beneficial effects could lead to new therapies for this type of pain,” Hinzey added.

During the study, one group of mice was paired with a companion for a week whilst the other was left socially isolated.

For three days, some mice from each group were exposed to brief stress whilst the others were left alone.

Researchers then performed nerve surgery, producing sensations to mimic neuropathic pain on one group and a sham procedure that didn't involve the nerves on a control group.

All groups were then tested with a light touch to their paws.

Those that had lived with a social partner, regardless of stress level, required a higher level of force before they withdrew while the isolated mice had a lower threshold and were increasingly responsive to a lighter touch.

Courtney DeVries, professor of neuroscience at Ohio State University, said: "We believe that socially isolated individuals are physiologically different from socially paired individuals, and that this difference seems to be related to inflammation.

"The data showed very nicely that the social environment is influencing not just behaviour but really the physiological response to the nerve injury."

Prof Steve McMahon of Kings College, London, director of the London Pain Consortium, said it was “well recognised” that pain in humans could be strongly modulated by mood, expectation and attitude.

He said that the more surprising aspect of the study was that the degree of inflammatory response to nerve injury could be affected by levels of social interaction.

However, he cautioned that the magnitude of the effects was not clear, nor whether they would persist.

Dr Adam Al-Kashi, head of research at the charity BackCare, agreed that psychology played an important role in the level of suffering experienced by some patients.

“Research evidence demonstrates that social and environmental interventions can have a tremendous impact on health, and they could certainly become the basis of new and effective therapeutic approaches,” he said.

Neuropathic pain, that associated with nerve injury, is believed to affect around six per cent of the population.

Independent