Up to 57% of youth report pain 3 to 36 months after a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI; Tham et al., 2013). Importantly, pain may be related to post-concussive symptoms (PCS). Thus our objective was to examine pain as a time-varying covariate of PCS. The current study recruited children ages 8 to 16 following mild TBI (n = 112) or orthopedic injury (OI; n = 67) at the time of injury and up to 6 months post-injury. Participants provided weekly ratings of their pain intensity and PCS frequency.

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... sults showed that children with mild TBI and OI do not have significantly different trajectories of pain decline over time. However, relative increases in an individual's pain ratings were related to increases in cognitive and somatic PCS, and this relationship was stronger in children with mild TBI than OI. Future research to better understand this closer association after mild TBI is warranted.