Women Report Pain More Often than Men, Global Analysis Finds
A global analysis of 6.1 million people found women reported pain more often than men in all 11 body areas studied.
- On Monday, October 5, 2026, researchers Matt Fillingim and Etienne Vachon-Presseau published a global analysis in Nature Medicine showing pain prevalence rises most sharply before age 55 across more than 6 million people.
- Pain is a leading cause of disability worldwide, yet most existing estimates rely on cross-sectional data capturing differences between age groups rather than tracking changes in the same individuals over time.
- Women report pain more often than men across all 11 body areas studied, with pain prevalence ranging from around 2% for facial pain to 40% for back pain.
- At age 80 or older, bodily pain prevalence was around 31 percentage points higher in countries with lower Human Development Index values, while back and knee pain continued rising with age.
- Known risk factors like smoking and obesity explain less of the pain burden in lower-development settings; researchers applied the Global Lifespan Pain Benchmarking Tool to standardize pain comparisons across diverse regions.
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Magnific. Women feel pain more often than men, according to a study based on data from more than 6.1 million people in 118 countries recently published in Nature Medicine magazine. Data collected between 1990 and 2025 refer to pain reported by patients aged 5 to 100 years in 11 parts of the body, as explained to the news agency EFE Marta Miret, a researcher who participated in the study and is a professor of the Psychiatry department of the Auto…
A new large-scale global study has found that women report experiencing more pain than men. This is true for all types of pain, which the researchers evaluated. The study's findings came amid concerns about gender disparities in pain management, meaning women are less likely to be given the painkillers they need, according to The Guardian.
Women report that they suffer more pain than men, show an important new global study. This was valid for all types of pain measured by researchers and comes to the heart of continuing concern about the difference in pain between gender, which means that women are less likely to be prescribed the analgesic they need, reports The Guardian.
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Le Journal de QuebecWomen would feel more pain than men, according to a study published in the scientific journal Nature.
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