Musculoskeletal pain and rehabilitation

Chronic musculoskeletal pain, particularly low back pain, affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide and stands among the leading causes of long-term disability and lost productivity across nearly every country. Pharmacological research in this space examines how drugs alleviate or fail to alleviate pain, how psychological factors such as catastrophizing and depression interact with treatment response, and how outcomes are reliably captured through validated health status questionnaires used in clinical trials. A persistent challenge is that widely used medications—from NSAIDs to opioids—show modest average effects that mask enormous individual variation, making it difficult to match treatments to patients in routine care. Active work focuses on refining measurement instruments to detect clinically meaningful change, understanding the mechanisms behind pain chronification, and designing trials that better account for the psychological and social dimensions of how people experience and report pain.

Works

150,103

Total citations

2,544,665

Keywords

Chronic PainGlobal BurdenDisabilityMeasurement PropertiesHealth Status QuestionnairesLow Back Pain