Originally Posted by glenntaj

--from the first paragraph a form of qualitative sensory testing was performed, and from what they've written there may be some disruption in proper interpretation of sensations of heat and cold, which are the province of small, unmyelinated fibers in the skin.

Allodynia refers to the sensation of pain in the absence of painful stimuli. Many people with neuropathies, particularly of the small fibers, have this as a symptom--small, unmyelinated fibers also control the sensations of pain (particularly those tied to very high or very low temperatures); damaged nerve fibers tend to spontaneously signal to the brain even when the stimuli are not there. In the case of pain, these signals tend to produce a burning, angry sort of pain that seems to radiate out from the skin, very different from that associated with a pinch or a bruise (what kind of symptoms are you experiencing?).

It would be good if the skin biopsy report contained actual values for intraepidermal nerve fiber density (did they only biopsy one site?). The PGP 9.5 is a stain that is used to reveal the presence of these small fibers--that seems to be "normal" (though it's hard to tell without numbers, and, as I've written in other posts, no one knows where you "started" in terms of density before symptoms, so it's hard to say whether whatever figure would be normal for you--there is wide variation in the nerve fiber densities among people, and the "abnormal" criterion according to the McArthur protocols is rather narrowly set, I believe, at below the 5th and above the 95th percentiles). The finding of elevated heat receptors is suggestive, though, as is the presence of regenerating fibers--I would go out on a limb and say you've had some sort of neuropathic process going on, though you're body is attempting to repair it--and repair can often come with it's own set of weird symptoms as the nerve fibers fight to reconnect (symptoms from a damaging process and from a repair process can often be eerily similar and hard to distinguish except in long-term retrospect, one of the many reasons a lot of us keep symptom diaries over long periods of time).

The problem with this testing is that it will not typically reveal a cause. What other testing have you had, and what other health issues are you experiencing?