Women Report More Pain at Every Body Site, Study Finds — SkimNews
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- The study, published in Nature Medicine and drawing on data from more than 6 million people across 118 countries between 1990 and 2025, found women's self-reported pain was higher than men's across all 11 body sites measured — head, face, neck, back, knees, hips and more.
- Headache, facial and abdominal pain showed the largest gender gaps, while back pain was the most common complaint overall at about 40% of participants, and facial pain the rarest at 2%.
- Pain rose most steeply before age 55 and peaked at or beyond 75; high-intensity pain peaked around age 50 while generalised pain peaked around 70, indicating a substantial share of lifetime pain burden develops during working-age adulthood.
- Smoking, obesity and low household incomes together accounted for 18.3% of the global pain burden, ranging from 12.6% in sub-Saharan Africa to 27.1% in eastern Europe, with obesity alone reaching 14.6% in North America.
- People in the lowest Human Development Index regions faced substantially higher late-life pain prevalence and almost double the rates of low back pain in older age compared with better-off regions.
- Professor Andrew Horne of the University of Edinburgh called the research a 'landmark study' and said it provides strong evidence the gender pain gap is 'real, consistent and global,' while Professor Rebeccah Slater of Oxford flagged the 'troubling paradox' that women experience more pain but are more likely to have it dismissed or undertreated.
Why it matters: With data on 6 million people across 118 countries, this is the most comprehensive evidence yet that the gender pain gap is systemic rather than anecdotal — giving clinicians, policymakers and funders a mandate to analyse pain data by sex, target prevention at working-age adults, and address the dismissal of women's pain that two named experts call a 'troubling paradox.'
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