A first-of-its-kind survey from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that chronic pain is a prevalent condition, occurring about as often as hypertension or depression, and most sufferers don’t find resolution from chronic pain within a year.
 
The findings came from a new analysis of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data by investigators from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) at the NIH, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and the University of Washington, Seattle. The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.
 
“Understanding incidence, beyond overall prevalence, is critical to understanding how chronic pain manifests and evolves over time. These data on pain progression stress the need for increased use of multimodal, multidisciplinary interventions able to change the course of pain and improve outcomes for people,” said Richard Nahin, PhD, lead author and lead epidemiologist at NCCIH.
 
Chronic pain and high-impact chronic pain affect adults at a rate of 21% and 8% respectively. Chronic pain is defined as a type of pain that is experienced on most days or every day for the past three months. High-impact chronic pain is a pain that limits life or work activities on most days or every day during the past three months.
 
The links between widespread burden of chronic pain and the country’s opioid epidemic underscore the urgency to understand and address the issue of pain, NIH reports.
 
The study, which assessed self-reported measures of pain in 2020 compared to a baseline status in 2019, yielded several key findings.
 
New chronic pain cases occurred in about 52.4 casess per 1,000 people each year. This is greater than diabetes, depression, and hypertension, which occur at rates of 7.1, 15.9, and 45.3 cases per 1,000 persons each year.
 
Among the group which had non-chronic pain in 2019, 14.9% said they had chronic pain in 2020, suggesting that early management is important to prevention.
 
Chronic pain is persistent, with 61.4% of respondents who reported chronic pain in 2019 still reporting it a year later. Additionally, chronic pain developed into high-impact chronic pain at a rate of 190/1,000 cases per year. Three hundred and sixty-one of 1,000 cases per year of people who had high-impact chronic pain were still suffering a year later. Only about one in 10 people with chronic pain in 2019 recovered and were pain free in 2020.
 
“This study doesn’t just demonstrate the terrible burden of pain in this country. While 10% of people who recover from chronic pain give us hope, we have an urgent scientific imperative to expand our tools to fight pain so we can restore many more to a pain-free life,” said Helene M. Langevin, MD, director of NCCIH. “The onset of any chronic condition is a pivotal moment and early intervention can make a significant difference in the toll that the condition takes on the individual.”