Pain Awareness Month – September 2024

People with arthritis experience a range of symptoms, from joint stiffness to extreme tiredness. However, pain can be the most difficult symptom for many people. This Pain Awareness Month we wanted to share with you how we are funding research to tackle chronic pain.

What is Pain Awareness Month?

Pain Awareness Month is a global initiative to highlight the challenges faced by those living with chronic pain and the importance of better support and management.

Each year, the British Pain Society (BPS), alongside the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), aim to raise public awareness around pain by highlighting topics such as:

• pain management
• the experiences of people living with pain
• and the great work of pain professionals.

For Pain Awareness Month 2024, the BPS is focussing on a unified approach across the UK to improve pain management, raise awareness, and empower those affected.

#MyPainStory encourages people to share their personal experience of living with chronic pain.

You can join the BPS in raising awareness, sharing stories, and supporting those living with chronic pain across the UK.

What is chronic pain?

Chronic pain - pain which has lasted for more than three months - affects between 18.4 million (34%) and 28 million people (43%) in the UK.

74% of people with musculoskeletal conditions report pain as impacting on their lives. Pain can affect many different parts of our body and around eight in every ten people (84%) with chronic pain in England say that at least some of their chronic pain is in areas where the pain is most likely to be musculoskeletal.

 Everybody’s pain is different, and people with chronic pain typically experience several different kinds of pain.

Pain is complex and is affected by many different factors. Alongside biological causes, psychological factors such as thoughts and feelings, personal relationships and lifestyle, can also affect chronic pain. However, we currently don’t know which of these factors are most important, or how they combine to affect people’s overall experience of pain.

Pain can affect how we move, think, sleep and feel, along with our ability to spend time with loved ones.

There is a real need for pain research to help understand what causes and influences people’s experience of pain. This will help to find effective treatments, with fewer side effects.

By further developing our understanding of pain and finding new ways to treat and prevent it, we can push back against the impact chronic pain has on people with arthritis.

What are we doing to tackle pain?

Versus Arthritis has made a long-standing commitment to tackle pain by funding world-leading research and supporting people living with pain. This includes the Pain Centre Versus Arthritis and the Advanced Pain Discovery Platform (APDP).

The Pain Centre Versus Arthritis  opened in 2010, at the University of Nottingham, and investigates the mechanisms that lead to chronic pain with a view to improving treatments for pain. Professor David Walsh from the University of Nottingham is Co-Director of the Centre and also worked with Versus Arthritis as a core member of the Pain Advisory Group to develop the Pain Roadmap, which outlined the most vital areas for future pain research.  Understanding these areas led us to develop the Advanced Pain Discovery Platform (APDP) initiative.

The APDP is a five-year, £24 million initiative funded by Versus Arthritis in partnership with the UK Research and Innovation Strategic Priorities fund, with additional funding coming from Eli Lilly and the Medical Research Foundation.

The APDP brings together pain scientists from across the UK to work together to take on the challenge of chronic pain.

The funded APDP projects range from basic lab-based science, through to biopsychosocial research and data platforms, involving people with lived experience of pain at the heart of research to accelerate advances in understanding the causes and influences of chronic pain.

The APDP includes four large multidisciplinary consortia as well as 11 smaller research grants and a national data hub for chronic pain. The platform is brought together under the directorship of Professor David Walsh, the Programme Director for APDP.

Find out more about some of our APDP consortia

Alleviate

Where is the research being carried out?

University of Bath, University of Dundee, Imperial College London, King’s College London, University of Nottingham, and University of Oxford.

What is the aim of the research?

This project aims to develop a national data hub for pain research. This will transform the data landscape allowing for data to be more accessible and usable by pain researchers.

How will it help people with arthritis?

Working with Health Data Research UK (HDR UK), the data platform provides secure access to pain data for the research community. This will enable researchers to tackle the challenges in understanding the complexity and unpredictability of pain, paving the way to new and improved treatments across diverse chronic and debilitating pain conditions.

The Consortium to Research Individual, Interpersonal and Social influences in Pain (CRIISP)

Where is the research taking place?

University of Bath, Bath Spa University, University of Bristol, Cardiff University, University College London, Keele University, University of London, Royal Holloway, University of Southampton, and University of the West of England.

What is the aim of the research?

The CRIISP team is undertaking research to focus on how people perceive pain, the psychological mechanisms that might contribute to chronic pain, and the effects of wider social and environmental influences on the experience of pain.

How will this help people with arthritis?

By changing how we think about the experience of pain, the CRIISP researchers hope to open up new areas of pain research that will lead to better ways to help people with chronic pain to live well with less pain.

The Consortium Against Pain inEquality (CAPE)

Where is the research being carried out?

University of Aberdeen, University College London, University of Dundee, University of Edinburgh, and University of Stirling.

What is the aim of the research?

The researchers aim to understand the impact of adverse childhood experiences on chronic pain and responses to treatment. The CAPE team will try to establish the contribution of exposure to adverse childhood experiences on health inequalities and the experience of chronic pain in adulthood.

How will this help people with arthritis?

If this project can identify which adverse childhood experiences may contribute to adult experiences of chronic pain, we may gain insight into how we can reduce long-term vulnerability to chronic pain, and more safely manage pain.

What does this mean for the future?

The APDP projects will increase our knowledge of the causes of chronic pain in arthritis and other painful conditions, getting us closer to finding new ways to treat it.

The initiative will encourage collaborative partnerships and build relationships between key experts from UK and international clinical and research organisations, government, industry, charities, and the public. And most importantly, it will enable people living with chronic pain to become an active part of its solution.

The initiative will also raise the profile of chronic pain among the public, policy makers and government, building momentum to tackle pain and improve people’s quality of life.

We hope that our funded research into pain, along with the APDP, will ultimately transform the lives of people with arthritis living with chronic pain, and prevent more people from experiencing a life of pain in the future.

Find out about our research into pain

Professor David Walsh "My mission is to solve chronic pain for as many as possible" (versusarthritis.org)

The Advanced Pain Discovery Platform - APDP

Our fibromyalgia research highlights (versusarthritis.org)

New research to tackle musculoskeletal pain in young people (versusarthritis.org)

How our research is helping to treat low back pain in a personalised way (versusarthritis.org)

Find out about chronic pain in England

Chronic pain in England: Unseen, unequal, unfair (versusarthritis.org)

How to get involved in our research 

Our research partners and volunteers help us to bring real-life perspectives to our research activities.

Find out more about how you can help shape our research or participate in research studies on our website or email us at: patientinsight@versusarthritis.org 

Read here to find out how lived experience is crucial to tackling chronic pain together:
Beating chronic pain: the need for teamwork and listening to people with lived experience (versusarthritis.org)

Get the support you need 

If you would like to talk to someone, you can:

• Call our free helpline on 0800 5200 520
• Talk to our arthritis virtual assistant, 24/7
• Join our online community
• Stay in touch and follow us on Twitter/X, Facebook and Instagram.