Women report more pain across all 11 body regions studied
An international analysis combines symptom surveys covering 118 countries and territories, with 6.1 million participants reporting pain. Women reported pain more frequently at every body site examined, while age patterns varied by location and region. The peer-reviewed work creates shared reference curves for comparison; its mostly cross-sectional data describe differences between age groups rather than individual ageing.
Science··Midday
Pain patterns differ across body sites
Back, hip and knee pain became more frequent at later ages in the international comparison, while headache and abdominal pain peaked earlier. For most of the anatomical sites examined, the fastest increase occurred before 55. The peer-reviewed analysis published on October 5 therefore describes several distinct age profiles rather than one steady rise covering every type of pain.[1]
Women reported pain more often in each of the 11 categories. The largest differences concerned facial pain, headache and abdominal pain. These comparisons concern symptoms that people described themselves; they do not identify the biological or social reasons behind the differences.[1]
Six million participants provide a common comparison
The dataset combines 6,125,459 participants in 118 countries and territories, aged from five to over one hundred. Observations collected during 1990–2025 were harmonized across questionnaires and body maps. Facial pain affected about 2 percent of participants, compared with about 40 percent for back pain. Older groups in lower-development settings reported a greater burden, and an online tool allows external datasets to be compared with the reference curves.[1]
Age groups were compared rather than followed through life
Most surveys captured participants at one point in time. Recall periods, language and definitions differed, and some regions and age groups were sparsely represented. The resulting curves compare populations of different ages. They cannot establish how one person’s pain develops or convert every reported symptom into a diagnosis of chronic pain.[1]
