Researchers looked at pain around the world and across the human lifespan, finding steepest rise happens before age 55
Women report suffering more pain than men, a major new global study has found.
That was true for all types of pain the researchers measured, and comes amid continuing concern about the gender pain gap, which means women are less likely to be prescribed the pain relief they need.
Researchers from all over the world carried out “one of the largest harmonization efforts in pain epidemiology to date”. Data was collected from more than 6 million people from 118 countries from 1990 to 2025, and included people from five years old to more than 100.
The research, published in Nature Medicine, looked at how pain, as the leading global cause of disability, was distributed both around the world and across the human lifespan.
"It found women’s self-reported pain across 11 bodily sites – head, face, neck or shoulder, foot or ankle, hand or wrist, elbow, chest, back, stomach or abdomen, hip and knee – was higher than for men."
Self report, not really all that useful. Could be anything from "women experience more pain" to "women are encouraged to speak up about pain" to "women are less inured to pain". I'm afraid it's a bit clickbaity.
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