Global and regional reference curves for pain across the lifespan in 6.1 million individuals in 118 countries.

Global pain trajectories across the lifespan were established from over 6.1 million individuals in 118 countries, revealing higher late-life pain prevalence in low-HDI nations.

• Why it matters: Understanding how pain burden varies worldwide and across ages is crucial for developing equitable health policies and targeted interventions, yet no harmonized reference exists.
• What they did: Researchers harmonized self-reported pain data from 902 sources involving 6,125,459 participants, creating open-access benchmarks to compare external datasets against global pain norms.
• The result: Findings show that late-life pain is substantially higher in low-HDI countries, with modifiable factors like smoking, obesity, and low income accounting for up to 27.1% of pain burden in some regions, guiding future prevention efforts.