Women DO suffer more pain than men

The endless debate between the sexes over who is best able to handle pain is usually won by women when they utter one word: childbirth.

While women undergo the most excruciating pain bringing life into the world, research has found they are also more likely to suffer chronic pain than men.

Women are more likely to feel pain more intensely than men, studies have found.

But the differences have often been explained as being to do with social and cultural factors and the varying effects of different male and female hormones on the body.

Now science has found that the way each sex processes pain is different – and may one day lead to specific ‘his ‘n’ hers’ painkillers.

The breakthrough has come in studies with male and female mice – but scientists believe it is likely to be the same in humans too.

The study’s co-author, Jeffrey Mogill, professor of pain studies at McGill University, said: ‘Research has demonstrated that men and women have different sensitivity to pain and that more women suffer from chronic pain than men.

'But the assumption has always been that the wiring of how pain is processed is the same in both sexes.

‘The realisation that the biological basis for pain between men and women could be so fundamentally different raises important research and ethical questions if we want to reduce suffering.’

The researchers studied the longstanding theory that pain is transmitted from the site of injury or inflammation through the nervous system using an immune system cell called microglia.

But this new research shows this is only true in male mice. 

Interfering with the function of microglia in a variety of different ways effectively blocked pain in male mice, but had no effect in female mice.

According to the researchers, a completely different type of immune cell, called T cells, appears to be responsible for sounding the pain alarm in female mice.

Co-author Michael Salter of Toronto University said: ‘Understanding the pathways of pain and sex differences is absolutely essential as we design the next generation of more sophisticated, targeted pain medications.

‘We believe that mice have very similar nervous systems to humans, especially for a basic evolutionary function like pain, so these findings tell us there are important questions raised for human pain drug development.’

Professor Mogill added: ‘For the past 15 years scientists have thought that microglia controlled the volume knob on pain, but this conclusion was based on research using almost exclusively male mice.

‘This finding is a perfect example of why this policy, and very carefully designed research, is essential if the benefits of basic science are to serve everyone.’

The study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. 

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