Women experience more chronic pain than men

Researchers around the world have been investigating the differences between women and men in their experience of pain and have found that women do feel more pain and more chronic pain than men.

In a US study reported in the British Journal of Anaesthesia, researchers at the Pain Research and Intervention Center of Excellence at the University of Florida reported that men and women differed in their responses to pain, with increased pain sensitivity and risk for clinical pain commonly being observed among women.

“Differences in responsivity to pharmacological and non-pharmacological pain interventions have been observed; however, these effects are not always consistent and appear dependent on treatment type and characteristics of both the pain and the provider,” the researchers said.

“Although the specific basis underlying these sex differences is unknown, it seems inevitable that multiple biological and psychosocial processes are contributing factors… [while] a considerable literature implicates sex hormones as factors influencing pain sensitivity.”

Earlier this month, researchers at the University of Adelaide in South Australia reported they had discovered that the cellular and molecular generators of pain were fundamentally different between males and females and that immune-like cells in the nervous system called glia appeared to be the factor.

Glia are a collection of immune-like cells that outnumber neurons 10 to one throughout the brain and spinal cord, the researchers noted. Female pain was fundamentally different to male pain because of the different reliance on glia with the result that women experienced pain that was more severe than men’s and the pain was harder to treat.

“Excitingly, this discovery provides a new potential treatment option for female chronic pain sufferers: glial-targeted drugs may more effectively treat exaggerated female chronic pain. These drugs aren’t available right now, but if they prove to be safe and continue to show promise in ongoing clinical studies they may be available in the near future.

“Considering the immunology of the brain, and that glial cells in particular are involved in several neurological conditions, these results may have wide-reaching implications for many brain disorders.”