A pain research agenda for the 21st century

Abstract

Chronic pain represents an immense clinical problem. With tens of millions of people in the United States alone suffering from the burden of debilitating chronic pain, there is a moral obligation to reduce this burden by improving the understanding of pain and treatment mechanisms, developing new therapies, optimizing and testing existing therapies, and improving access to evidence-based pain care. Here, we present a goal-oriented research agenda describing the American Pain Society's vision for pain research aimed at tackling the most pressing issues in the field.

Perspective: This article presents the American Pain Society's view of some of the most important research questions that need to be addressed to advance pain science and to improve care of patients with chronic pain.

Keywords: Chronic pain; pain education; pain research; pain treatment; research funding.

Figure 1

Expenditures for 6 major chronic conditions. Societal cost data (black bars) were derived from the following sources: chronic pain, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and Alzheimer’s disease. All societal costs were converted to 2010 dollars. NIH expenditures (gray bars) are from the NIH categorical spending data providedonnih.gov for 2012, the most recent year available.