Joanne Stocks

Versus Arthritis MSK Pain Research Day 2019

The Versus Arthritis ‘Pain Research in the UK: Combating musculoskeltal pain together’ event was held today in conjunction with Pain Centre Versus Arthritis at the University of Nottingham.

MSK pain researchers from around the UK were invited to present elevator pitches to summarise their research and signpost us to their posters where their research was presented in more detail. I presented my placebo IPD research and it was a great opportunity to network with fellow pain researchers as well as speak to pharmaceutical industry representatives. I was able to discuss the importance of sharing research data from RCT’s so that the data can be combined for individual patient data (IPD) analysis.

Pain Centre MSK PPI members, Michael and Debra, also attended and were able to give their perspectives to our discussions as well learning about the UK pain research being funded by VA and other funding organisations.

Prof Lars Arendt-Nielsen from Aalborg University, Denmark gave the key note lecture on ‘Mechanistic assessment of arthritis pain: Implications on management’ followed by a number of workshops which allowed more in depth discussions. I led the ‘Future Pain Epidemiology Priorities’ workshop with my colleague Dr Dan McWilliams. The focus of the workshop was ‘What should be our next priority and how best shall we approach this?’ We considered the importance of sleep, AI, genomics, co-morbidities and big data as well as what is the best approach to measure pain in an epidemiology.

The day gave a valuable overview on where we are in terms of pain research in the UK and was also a useful networking opportunity for future collaborations. I look forward to a repeat of this event in the future.

Joanne Stocks