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Children with familial Mediterranean fever experiencing a sore throat are more likely to prefer the color red, highlighting a potential non-verbal cue for assessing pain perception.
Children with familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) may communicate aspects of their pain through colour choices. The colour preference could provide clinicians with an additional non-verbal approach to understanding children's subjective pain experiences.
Pain assessment remains challenging in children because limited cognitive development and vocabulary can make it difficult for them to accurately describe what they are feeling. Colour-based communication has gained interest as a child-friendly method that may help clinicians better interpret pain and emotional experiences.
A cross-sectional study of children with FMF examined colour preferences during painful and pain-free episodes:
What the analysis showed!
Colour preferences were analysed using two schemes: the full seven-colour palette, and a reduced four-colour scheme (white, red, blue, black) created to increase statistical power. Under the seven-colour scheme, no significant association was found between colour choice and pain at any of the five sites tested.
Under the reduced four-colour scheme, one association reached statistical significance: throat pain. Among children with throat pain, 51% chose red, compared with 36.4% of children without throat pain. No other pain site was significant under either scheme.
Looking at pain overall (regardless of location), red and black were the most common colour choices during painful episodes, while white and blue predominated during pain-free periods (see Table 1).
A note on strength of evidence: Throat-pain association emerged only after colours were regrouped specifically because the initial seven-colour analysis found no significant results; the study does not report a correction for multiple comparisons across the pain sites and colour schemes tested. This is a single-centre, exploratory finding in a modest sample and would need replication in larger, multi-centre cohorts before informing clinical practice.
Bottom line
Generalised FMF-related pain did not universally determine colour choice. However, the specific association between sore throat and increased preference for red suggested that certain physiological stressors may trigger distinct emotional and perceptual associations. They further noted that colour-based assessment tools could serve as valuable non-verbal adjuncts for dental and medical practitioners when decoding children's subjective pain experiences.
Journal of Contemporary Medicine
The Relationship Between Pain Perception and Colour Preferences in the Paediatric Population: A Cross-Sectional Study
Müzeyyen Dilşah Demiray et al.
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