Pain and Arthritis

People with arthritis often suffer chronic pain

Pain is different things to different people. For people with arthritis pain it is not a single pain, it is on-going, and can be very debilitating. Pain is not just what you feel in your body; it also affects your well-being and daily activities.

Arthritis affects young and old alike, and many parts of the body. For many people, joint replacement surgery provides relief, but 15% of postoperative patients still report persistent pain. With our ageing population and rising levels of obesity, we are likely to see an increase in arthritis over the next 10 to 20 years.

The Arthritis Research UK Pain Centre at the University of Nottingham has been created to investigate the mechanisms that lead to the chronic pain experienced by sufferers of arthritis, so that we can improve the treatment of that pain.

The Centre is funded by a substantial award from Arthritis Research UK.

What makes pain mechanisms so complex?

A lot is already known about the interplay of various factors that cause pain; however, the understanding of how all those factors contribute to the final experience of pain is incomplete. A key question is why experience of pain may not necessarily match the severity of the joint damage seen in xrays or MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans.

This is why the Centre has adopted a broad perspective on how individuals process pain signals and is:

• finding out how people understand their pain and what they expect from treatment;
• examining how best to support people to cope with pain and the activities of daily living;
• investigating the role of peripheral (e.g. joint, muscle and tendon) and central (brain and spine) pain mechanisms, with a view to producing new compounds to target pain pathways;
• improving the use of existing drug therapies and testing new painkillers.