New study sheds light on pain and depression
Depression and loneliness are more profound in people with chronic pain years before their pain starts, according to a new study.
Researchers said that chronic pain is a 'major public health concern' as it affects up to 40% of people in the UK and Europe and is a leading cause of disability.
It has been linked to problems including depression and loneliness, but academics wanted to understand more about the connection, particularly in the period before pain starts.
A team from University College London (UCL) examined 21 years of data from a long-term study tracking the health and wellbeing of patients.
In the new study, published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, experts examined data on more than 7,300 adults in England aged 50 and older.
Half of these went on to suffer pain, including aches and pains of the back, knee, hip or foot, while the others did not.
Researchers found that middle-aged and older adults who experience pain are more likely to have had worsening symptoms of depression up to eight years before the onset of pain.
These symptoms got worse in the years leading up to pain, appeared to peak when the pain was first noticed and remained high in the years after the pain started.
Symptoms of depression were less common, less severe and relatively constant among people who did not suffer pain.
Struggling with feelings of depression, excessive worry, social anxiety, post-traumatic stress or obsessions and compulsions? NHS Talking Therapies can help.
The service is effective, confidential and free.
Your GP can refer you or refer yourself at https://t.co/hLaEBNYcHL pic.twitter.com/VD8EdQsjKP
— NSFT mental health (@NSFTtweets) May 13, 2025
They also found that loneliness increased both in the years before and years after the onset of pain but stayed low and relatively constant among the group who did not suffer pain.
As a result, the researchers suggested that treatment for depression might help to prevent or reduce later aches and pains.
Lead author Dr Mikaela Bloomberg, from UCL's research department of epidemiology and public health, said: 'Pain and depression are known to be linked, with each exacerbating the other. But we don't know about the timing of these related conditions.
'Our study shows that depressive symptoms and loneliness worsen long before pain begins.
'This is important as it suggests the potential for early mental health and social support to reduce or delay later pain.
'Factors such as depression and loneliness can contribute to pain through several mechanisms – by inducing stress, they may increase inflammation, which can lead to pain; they also may increase sensitivity to pain by changing immune responses and by dysregulating our autonomic nervous system, the network of nerves that control unconscious processes such as the 'flight or fight' response.
'Our findings highlight the importance of approaching pain not just from a biological perspective, mental health interventions may be important too.'
The team found that depressive symptoms were most pronounced in people with lower levels of education and among less wealthy patients.
'This study provides further evidence supporting the importance of targeting loneliness and mental health in older people,' the authors wrote.
'Proactive mental health and social support is needed in the decade preceding onset of pain and should be integrated into long-term pain management strategies, particularly for individuals with fewer socioeconomic resources.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
First bacteria we ever meet can keep us out of hospital
The first bacteria our bodies meet – in the hours after we're born – could protect us from dangerous infections, UK scientists say. They have shown, for the first time, that good bacteria seem to halve the risk of young children being admitted to hospital with lung infections. The researchers said it was a "phenomenal" finding and could lead to therapies that boost good bacteria in babies. Our early encounters with microbes are thought to be crucial in how our immune system develops. We come out of the womb sterile, but this doesn't last for long. All the nooks and crannies of the human body become home to a world of microbial life, known as the microbiome. More than half your body is not human Microbiome podcast: The Second Genome Researchers at University College London and the Sanger Institute investigated the earliest stages in our body's colonisation by bacteria, fungi and more. They collected stool samples from 1,082 newborns in the first week of life. The team then performed a massive genetic analysis on all the DNA in the samples to work out exactly which species were present and how common they were in each child. They then tracked what happened to those babies, using hospital data, for the next two years. One particular early inhabitant of the human body, Bifidobacterium longum, seemed to have a protective effect. Only 4% of babies with this species would spend a night in hospital with a lung infection over the next two years. Babies with different starter-bacteria were two-to-three times more likely to need to stay in hospital. It is the first data to show the formation of the microbiome affects the risk of infection. "I think it's really phenomenal. It's amazing to be able to show this. I'm excited," Prof Nigel Field, from UCL, told the BBC. The most likely culprit for children ending up in hospital is respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), but what joins the dots between this and B. longum? That is the "million dollar question" for Prof Field. We know B. longum starts off digesting breast milk which both contains food for the baby and encourages good bacteria. The exact details have not yet been worked out, but either the bacteria themselves or the compounds they make by digesting food are interacting with the immune system "and are influencing the way in which the immune system matures and is able to recognise friend from foe," according to Prof Field. The protective bacteria were found only in babies that came into the world via a vaginal delivery rather than a caesarean. Even then they were not discovered after every vaginal delivery. The researchers say their findings do not justify the practice of vaginal seeding, where some new parents smear babies with a swab taken from the vagina. How method of birth alters babies' bacteria The good bacteria seem to be coming from the end of the mother's digestive system, an idea known in the field as the "first lick". "I feel pretty confident in saying that vaginal seeding is not a good thing," said Prof Field. However, the long-term ambition is to come up with microbial therapies – like a probiotic yogurt – that could be given to babies to set their microbiomes on a healthy path. Prof Louise Kenny, from the University of Liverpool and a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, said: "A caesarean section is often a life-saving procedure, and can be the right choice for a woman and her baby." She said that while the benefit was seen only in babies born vaginally, it was not in every child born that way so "further research is needed to create a full, nuanced picture".
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
First bacteria we ever meet can keep us out of hospital
The first bacteria our bodies meet – in the hours after we're born – could protect us from dangerous infections, UK scientists say. They have shown, for the first time, that good bacteria seem to halve the risk of young children being admitted to hospital with lung infections. The researchers said it was a "phenomenal" finding and could lead to therapies that boost good bacteria in babies. Our early encounters with microbes are thought to be crucial in how our immune system develops. We come out of the womb sterile, but this doesn't last for long. All the nooks and crannies of the human body become home to a world of microbial life, known as the microbiome. More than half your body is not human Microbiome podcast: The Second Genome Researchers at University College London and the Sanger Institute investigated the earliest stages in our body's colonisation by bacteria, fungi and more. They collected stool samples from 1,082 newborns in the first week of life. The team then performed a massive genetic analysis on all the DNA in the samples to work out exactly which species were present and how common they were in each child. They then tracked what happened to those babies, using hospital data, for the next two years. One particular early inhabitant of the human body, Bifidobacterium longum, seemed to have a protective effect. Only 4% of babies with this species would spend a night in hospital with a lung infection over the next two years. Babies with different starter-bacteria were two-to-three times more likely to need to stay in hospital. It is the first data to show the formation of the microbiome affects the risk of infection. "I think it's really phenomenal. It's amazing to be able to show this. I'm excited," Prof Nigel Field, from UCL, told the BBC. The most likely culprit for children ending up in hospital is respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), but what joins the dots between this and B. longum? That is the "million dollar question" for Prof Field. We know B. longum starts off digesting breast milk which both contains food for the baby and encourages good bacteria. The exact details have not yet been worked out, but either the bacteria themselves or the compounds they make by digesting food are interacting with the immune system "and are influencing the way in which the immune system matures and is able to recognise friend from foe," according to Prof Field. The protective bacteria were found only in babies that came into the world via a vaginal delivery rather than a caesarean. Even then they were not discovered after every vaginal delivery. The researchers say their findings do not justify the practice of vaginal seeding, where some new parents smear babies with a swab taken from the vagina. How method of birth alters babies' bacteria The good bacteria seem to be coming from the end of the mother's digestive system, an idea known in the field as the "first lick". "I feel pretty confident in saying that vaginal seeding is not a good thing," said Prof Field. However, the long-term ambition is to come up with microbial therapies – like a probiotic yogurt – that could be given to babies to set their microbiomes on a healthy path. Prof Louise Kenny, from the University of Liverpool and a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, said: "A caesarean section is often a life-saving procedure, and can be the right choice for a woman and her baby." She said that while the benefit was seen only in babies born vaginally, it was not in every child born that way so "further research is needed to create a full, nuanced picture".
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
Ginormous planet discovered around tiny red star challenges our understanding of solar systems
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists have spotted a massive planet where one shouldn't be able to exist, according to leading theories of planet formation. A team of researchers discovered a giant planet, dubbed TOI-6894b, orbiting a low-mass red dwarf star about 241 light-years away from Earth. The findings, published June 4 in the journal Nature Astronomy, add another example to a growing list of space objects that challenge standard models of planet formation. "It's an intriguing discovery," study co-author Vincent Van Eylen, an astrophysicist at University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said in a statement. "We don't really understand how a star with so little mass can form such a massive planet! This is one of the goals of the search for more exoplanets." For years, astronomers thought low-mass stars, less than roughly a third the mass of our sun, would not be able to accumulate enough material to form giant planets. But a few examples that defy these predictions have cropped up, and scientists are looking for others to help revise theories of planet formation. To seek out these planets, study co-author Edward Bryant, an astronomer at University College London, and colleagues turned to the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a NASA satellite launched in 2018. In a 2023 study, Bryant and colleagues spotted 15 potential giant planets, including TOI-6894b, orbiting low-mass stars. The team homed in on TOI-6894b and its star with additional observations from TESS and several ground-based telescopes. Combining this data, the researchers found that TOI-6894b has about 17% as much mass as Jupiter, or about 53 times as much mass as Earth. The planet's radius is slightly larger than Saturn's, and it orbits its star — which contains about 20% as much mass as the sun — in just 3 days. Related: Scientists have discovered a new dwarf planet in our solar system, far beyond the orbit of Neptune "We did not expect planets like TOI-6894b to be able to form around stars this low-mass," Bryant said in the statement. The red dwarf is the lowest-mass star discovered to host a giant planet so far. "This discovery will be a cornerstone for understanding the extremes of giant planet formation." Though reports of giant planets orbiting red dwarfs are still rare, the discovery suggests that there could be many more of these behemoths in the Milky Way. "Most stars in our galaxy are actually small stars exactly like this, with low masses and previously thought to not be able to host gas giant planets," study co-author Daniel Bayliss, an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick, said in the statement. "So, the fact that this star hosts a giant planet has big implications for the total number of giant planets we estimate exist in our galaxy." TOI-6894b and other giant planets orbiting low mass stars throw a wrench in the core accretion model, the most common theory of how giant planets form. Typically, a giant planet's core grows until it's massive enough to quickly pull in gas from the surrounding protoplanetary disk. But the protoplanetary disks around low mass stars weren't expected to contain enough material for this to occur. RELATED STORIES —What's the largest planet in the universe? —Jupiter is shrinking and used to be twice as big, mind-boggling study reveals —New class of exoplanet — half-rock, half-water — discovered orbiting red dwarf Instead, TOI-6894b could have slowly accumulated gas over time, or it might have formed from a gravitationally unstable protoplanetary disk that collapsed into a planet. Studying the distribution of material in the planet's atmosphere could offer some clues to how it formed, according to the scientists. "This system provides a new challenge for models of planet formation, and it offers a very interesting target for follow-up observations to characterize its atmosphere," said study co-author Andrés Jordán, an astrophysicist at Adolfo Ibáñez University. Researchers will use the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the planet's atmosphere within the next year.
