ArticleCommunications medicine2025
Demographic variation in pain across 22 countries.
Article in Communications medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Prospective Association Between Life Satisfaction and Physical Pain: Evidence From Longitudinal and Cohort Data.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2026Article
- Predicting Pain: Electroencephalography Signatures of Neural Integration During Experimental Tonic Thermal Pain.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Article
- A comparative "report card" wellbeing assessment of 22 countries in the Global Flourishing Study.Discover global society · 2026Article
- Patterns of Comorbidity Between Chronic Pain and Chronic Diseases in US Adults: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of NHANES Data.Journal of pain research · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundRecent work has explored the sociocultural aspects of pain. However, global evidence is scarce, and little is known about how levels of pain differ across cultures and across demographic groups within those different cultures.
methodsUsing a nationally representative dataset of 202,898 individuals from 22 countries and a random effects meta-analysis, we examine the proportion of people in pain across key demographic groups (age, gender, marital status, employment status, education, immigration status, religious service attendance, race/ethnicity) and across countries.
resultsWe find substantial variation in pain across countries and demographic groups. Unadjusted proportions tests show that Egypt (0.60), Brazil (0.59), Australia (0.56), and Turkey (0.53) have the greatest proportion of people in pain whereas Israel (0.25), South Africa (0.29), Poland (0.32), and Japan (0.33) have the lowest proportion. The random effects meta-analysis shows that, across countries, the proportion of people in pain is highest in older age groups, among women and other gender groups, the widowed, those who were retired, those who had low level of education, and those who attended a religious service more than once a week. The analysis shows no difference in the proportion of people in pain regarding immigration status.
conclusionsPain varies substantially across countries and key demographic groups. This work provides valuable foundational insights for future research on the sociocultural factors of pain.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.