Hyperaesthesia of the shins
Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.
Bartonella quintana (or trench fever, or five-day fever), is a disease carried by body lice that causes, weirdly, hyperaesthesia of the shins — that is, generally heightened shin sensation, though mostly just heightened pain. However, this is unlikely to cause any diagnostic confusion with shin splints, since trench fever also causes a nasty fever and many other unpleasant symptoms, like fierce headaches and eyeball pain. Nevertheless, perfect sidebar fodder for my shin pain tutorial.