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Despite the widespread use of pain rating scales in neonatal care worldwide, a new Cochrane review shows that current tools for assessing pain in newborns are based on very low quality evidence. According to the review, none of the pain rating scales in use today are methodologically reliable enough to measure pain.

A large proportion of babies born very early need intensive care, which can be painful. But the healthcare system fails to provide pain relief to the full extent. This is shown by the largest survey to date of pain in neonatal care, now published in the journal Pain.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered that cells commonly associated with ageing and age-related diseases, known as senescent cells, may play a significant role in chronic pain and potentially headaches. This process has been linked to various conditions, including cancer and heart disease.

Our body perception relies on how the brain interprets and integrates signals from various sensory systems, including vision, touch, and proprioception – our body’s ability to sense its position and movement in space. In a recent study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet demonstrated that nociception, the sensory process that detects potentially damaging stimuli to the body, also plays a role in shaping our body perception. The article was recently published in the scientific journal PAIN.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a new comprehensive mapping of genetic activity for understanding the causes of chronic pain. The study, published in Nature Communications, opens way to more efficient non-addictive treatment for chronic pain and potentially headache disorders.

Eva Kosek, professor of Clinical Pain Research, has been awarded Roland Melzack Lecture Award by the International Association for the Study of Pain.

There does not appear to be any profound differences between so-called exposure-based CBT and traditional CBT in the treatment of fibromyalgia, according to a study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet. Both forms of treatment produced a significant reduction in symptoms in people affected by the disease. The study is one of the largest to date to compare different treatment options for fibromyalgia and is published in the journal PAIN.

Karin Jensen uses brain imaging to understand why chronic pain occurs and what happens in the body when placebo, the patient's positive expectations, affect the outcome of a treatment.

Cluster headache, sometimes known as “suicide headache”, have been described as a predominantly male disease. New research from Karolinska Institutet now shows that women who have the disease are more affected in their daily lives. They have longer periods of pain, a higher frequency of related symptoms, use more prophylactic medicine and take more sick leave. The results are published in two studies in the journal Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

In cannabis trials against pain, people who take placebos report feeling largely the same level of pain relief as those who consume the active cannabinoid substance. Still, these studies receive significant media coverage regardless of the clinical outcome, report researchers from Karolinska Institutet in a study published in JAMA Network Open.

People with long-term neuropathic pain took significantly fewer sick days from work after treatment with spinal cord stimulation, according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet published in the journal PAIN. The findings suggest that the treatment has the potential to increase life quality for chronic pain patients and reduce costs to society, the researchers say.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden might have found an explanation for why people with self-injury behaviour generally feel less pain than others. The key seems to be a more effective pain-modulation system, a discovery that can benefit people seeking help for their self-harm. The findings are published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Patrik Ernfors has been awarded this year's ERC Advanced Grant, which is one of Europe's most prestigious research funding programmes. This is the third time he receives an ERC AdG.

By building up expertise around how pain arises, he hopes to help find a future solution to chronic pain. Professor Patrik Ernfors writes about failures, his work with the Nobel Prizes and why you need to be open-minded to make new discoveries.

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is about how people can feel temperature and touch. The discoveries explain basic functions in our lives and have opened doors to new treatments for pain, for example. We take it for granted, the fact that we can feel an icy wind, a hot plate or a hug, but how this actually works was unknown until it was discovered by the Nobel Laureates, a discovery made not so long ago.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021 has been awarded jointly to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and their British colleagues have identified a possible contributory cause of fibromyalgia, a difficult to treat pain condition. In a study on mice and human tissue, the researchers found that fibromyalgia patients’ antibodies played a key part in symptom development. The results, which are published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, pave the way for developing new treatment strategies.

Researchers from the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Karolinska Institutet, together with researchers from Uppsala University, the University of Eastern Finland and King's College London, have been awarded a research grant from Foundation for Research in Rheumatology (Foreum), for their project entitled "Autoimmune and molecular mechanisms for pain and fatigue in fibromyalgia".

KI researcher Saida Hadjab explains pain at the molecular level in an interview in the Swedish web magazine Curie.

Four researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been granted a total of SEK 28 million in additional funding from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW). Two of these researchers are also promoted from Wallenberg Academy Fellows (WAF) to Wallenberg Scholars.

Myriam Aouadi and Camilla Svensson have been awarded the European Research Council’s Consolidator grant 2019 for research on the role of macrophages in liver disease and how autoantibodies contribute to chronic pain, respectively.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed an online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) programme for the difficult-to-treat pain syndrome fibromyalgia. In her doctoral thesis, Maria Hedman-Lagerlöf shows that patients who receive the treatment experience fewer symptoms and enjoy better quality of life.

Researcher at Karolinska Institutet have identified the first genetic link to CGRP signaling and cluster headache. CGRP is a neuropeptide that can trigger both migraines and cluster attacks and now several drugs are successfully launched that have CGRP or its receptor as their target. The results are published in a study in Cephalagia Report.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered a new sensory receptor organ that is able to detect painful mechanical damage, such as pricks and impacts. The discovery is being published in the scientific journal Science.

If a particular protein is missing during the fetal stage, no neurons develop that convey pain, temperature and itch, a study from Karolinska Institutet published in the journal Cell Reports shows. The discovery can eventually lead to new drugs for pain conditions.

It has long been assumed that chronic nerve pain is caused by hypersensitivity in the neurons that transmit pain. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now show that another kind of neuron that normally allows us to feel pleasant touch sensation, can switch function and instead signal pain after nerve damage. The results, which are presented in the journal Science, can eventually lead to more effective pain treatments.

​​​​​​​In a new study led from Karolinska Institutet, researchers report that people can be conditioned to associate images with particular pain responses – such as improved tolerance to pain – even when they are not consciously aware of the images. The findings are being published in the journal PNAS.