Prevalence of chronic pain in LTCs and multimorbidity : a cross-sectional study using UK Biobank
Abstract
Objectives : Chronic pain is often experienced alongside other long-term conditions (LTCs), yet our understanding of this, particularly in relation to multimorbidity (≥2 LTCs) is poor. We aimed to examine associations between the presence/extent of chronic pain with type/number of LTCs experienced. Methods : We examined the relationship between number/type of LTCs (N = 45) in UK Biobank participants (n = 500,295) who self-reported chronic pain lasting ≥3 months in seven body sites or widespread. Relative risk ratios (RRR) for presence/extent of chronic pain sites were compared using logistic regression adjusted for sociodemographic (sex/age/socioeconomic status) and lifestyle factors (smoking/alcohol intake/BMI/physical activity). Results : 218,648 participants self-reported chronic pain. Of these, 69.1% reported ≥1 LTC and 36.2% reported ≥2 LTCs. In 31/45 LTCs examined, >50% of participants experienced chronic pain. Chronic pain was common with migraine/headache and irritable bowel syndrome where pain is a primary symptom, but also with mental health conditions and diseases of the digestive system. Participants with >4 LTCs were over three times as likely to have chronic pain (RRR 3.56, 95% confidence intervals (CIs) 3.44–3.68) and 20 times as likely to have widespread chronic pain (RRR 20.13, 95% CI 18.26–22.19) as those with no LTCs. Conclusions: Chronic pain is extremely common across a wide range of LTCs. People with multimorbidity were at higher risk of having a greater extent of chronic pain. These results show that chronic pain is a key factor for consideration in the management of patients with LTCs or multimorbidity.
Citation
McQueenie , R , Jani , B D , Siebert , S , McLoone , P , McCowan , C , Macdonald , S , Mair , F S & Nicholl , B I 2021 , ' Prevalence of chronic pain in LTCs and multimorbidity : a cross-sectional study using UK Biobank ' , Journal of Multimorbidity and Comorbidity , vol. 11 . https://doi.org/10.1177/26335565211005870
Publication
Journal of Multimorbidity and Comorbidity
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2633-5565Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Description
This study was funded by Versus Arthritis (grant number 21970). This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource, approved project number 14151.Collections
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