About PainFACT
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PainFACT’s main objective is to identify the causal mechanisms associating chronic pain and hyperalgesia with anxiety, depression, fatigue and cardiovascular disease (core comorbidities) and multimorbidity.
The problem
Chronic pain is highly common, has huge impact on quality of life, and is the leading cause of disability. Notably, chronic pain patients also tend to suffer from a number of comorbid conditions including anxiety, depression, fatigue, cardiovascular diseases and premature mortality. The full extent of this clustering of diseases with chronic pain is unknown, and the mechanisms causing these conditions to cluster together remain to be identified.
The solution
Through analysis of patient data from the population of an entire country, PainFACT aims to characterize clusters of medical conditions that are associated with chronic pain. Using state of the art, genomic, proteomic, and brain imaging data from humans and mice, PainFACT will identify molecular mechanisms and develop predictive algorithms for new-onset chronic pain and pain related comorbidity.
The impact
Project results are expected to have major impact on the diagnostic classification of pain, early identification of patients at risk of multimorbidity, and the identification of treatment targets for development of new medicines.
