Plate Nº 87 · recorded October 10, 2026
Health & Medicine ResearchReported finding
Women Report Pain More Often Than Men in 6-Million-Person Study
A global study of 6.1 million people finds women report more pain than men in all 11 body areas, and pain rises fastest before age 55.
By Nathan Brooks3 min read605 words
In brief
- Researchers analyzed self-reported pain data from 6,125,459 people in 118 countries and territories, collected between 1990 and 2025.
- Women reported pain more often than men across all 11 body areas studied, with the largest gaps in facial pain, headaches and abdominal pain.
- Pain prevalence rose most sharply before age 55, not linearly across the lifespan.
- At age 80+, any bodily pain was about 31 percentage points more common in lower-HDI countries; low back pain was nearly twice as common.
- Reported pain prevalence ranged from roughly 2% (facial pain) to 40% (back pain).
Women reported pain more often than men in every one of the 11 body areas studied, according to a global analysis of more than 6 million people published in Nature Medicine. The gap was widest for facial pain, headaches, and stomach or abdominal pain.
The study, led by Matt Fillingim, Etienne Vachon-Presseau and colleagues, analyzed self-reported pain data collected between 1990 and 2025 from 6,125,459 people across 118 countries and territories. Participants ranged in age from 5 to over 100.
Pain is a leading cause of disability worldwide. Yet researchers have lacked a standard way to compare self-reported pain across ages and regions, because existing estimates often focus on diagnosed conditions — an approach that may miss people with limited access to health care.
The new findings could help scientists compare pain across populations and improve global pain monitoring and prevention.
How common is pain, and where does it hurt?
Prevalence varied enormously depending on where it hurt. Across the dataset, reported pain ranged from roughly 2% for facial pain to 40% for back pain.
The analysis covered 11 body areas. For every single one, women reported pain more often than men, with the largest sex differences in facial pain, headaches and abdominal pain. The study did not establish why these gaps exist.
Does pain just increase with age?
Not in a straight line, the data suggest. Across all body areas, pain prevalence rose most sharply before age 55. After that point, the increase flattened for many types of pain.
The pattern also depended on the body area:
- Headaches and abdominal pain peaked earlier in life.
- Back, hip and knee pain kept climbing with age.
The researchers suggest, based on these patterns, that pain prevention may need to start earlier in life than typically assumed, and to be tailored to different regions.
Where in the world is pain most common?
The study revealed a striking geographic divide. From age 40 onward, pain anywhere in the body, joint pain and back pain all increased more rapidly in countries with lower Human Development Index (HDI) values. The HDI is a United Nations measure combining income, education and life expectancy.
The gap widens dramatically in old age. Among people aged 80 and older, the prevalence of any bodily pain was around 31 percentage points higher in countries with lower HDI values than in those with higher HDI values. In the same age group, low back pain was nearly twice as common in less-developed countries.
Known risk factors — including smoking, obesity and low income — explained less of the pain burden in lower-development settings. The researchers state that the reasons for these higher pain levels remain unclear.
What are the study's limitations?
The authors flag one important caveat: most of the data were collected at a single point in time. That means the results show differences between age groups, not changes within the same people as they age. In other words, the curves describe who reports pain at which age, not how any individual's pain will evolve over a lifetime.
Self-reported data also come with their own uncertainties, since pain perception and willingness to report it can vary across cultures and between individuals.
Even with those limits, the scale of the dataset — 6.1 million people, 35 years of collected data, 118 countries and territories — makes it one of the broadest pictures of global pain patterns assembled to date.
The paper, "Global and regional reference curves for pain across the lifespan in 6.1 million individuals in 118 countries," was published in Nature Medicine (DOI: 10.1038/s41591-026-04696-w).
via Medical Xpress (Source)
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