by Marcus Beasley and colleagues. Published in the Journal of Pain in 2025, see link here.
Background
Long-term pain has a very large effect on peoples lives and the UK healthcare system spends a lot of resources treating pain. A public health approach to long-term pain could be used to reduce the total amount and impact of pain in the UK population. This approach could be used to increase the amount of exercise or reduce the weight of people in the general population. If risk factors for pain are improved in the general population, then pain in later life might be reduced.
Study aims and objectives
This study used statistical modelling of data from 166,926 people from the UK Biobank study to assess how improvements in physical activity levels and reductions in weight could improve pain across the UK general population.
Study findings and conclusions
Detailed data analyses found that increasing vigorous physical activity by two days per week and 20 min per session was associated with a reduction in high-impact long-term pain from 18.1% to 16.7% of people.
Weight was converted into the body mass index to account for people being different heights. A reduction in body mass index of 7% was associated with a reduction in high-impact long-term pain from 18.9% to 17.5% of people.
Future directions for research and healthcare
This study could help inform the development of public health strategies that promote physical activity and healthy weight to address the burden of high-impact long-term pain.
The findings support public health approaches for shared environmental and social risk factors, rather than individual-level interventions.