A senior lecturer in pain neuroscience at the University of Liverpool has secured £1.7m to expand the understanding and potential treatment of chronic widespread pain.
Dr Andrew Marshall, a senior lecturer in pain neuroscience and Honorary Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist at the University has been awarded £1.7 million from the Wellcome Career Development Award Fellowship.
His project aims to uncover the complex ways in which stress contributes to the development and persistence of chronic widespread pain - a debilitating condition that affects millions globally and costs the UK economy an estimated £10 billion annually.
Dr Marshall's research will explore how chronic stress, particularly when compounded by early life adversity - a factor often more prevalent among lower socioeconomic groups - can "prime" the nervous system. This priming can leave the body predisposed to long-term pain, even in the absence of obvious injury or illness. His work has the potential to transform our approach to poorly understood 'nociplastic pain syndromes,' which are known to disproportionately affect women.
To explore these connections, the study will employ cutting-edge techniques, including microneurography - a method of recording signals from individual sensory nerve fibres - to identify signs of 'hyperalgesic priming'. This is a pain condition in which stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, along with immune system changes, make pain-sensing nerves hypersensitive, creating a latent vulnerability to chronic pain.
Dr. Andrew Marshall said: "Chronic pain devastates lives, yet we still don't fully understand how it takes hold - especially in cases where there's no clear physical cause. This grant allows us to look directly at how stress can prime the peripheral nerves, potentially years before symptoms appear, leaving them in a highly sensitive state to future pain stimuli or 'triggers'."
It's hoped the work will uncover early biological markers that could predict who is at risk of developing chronic pain and test new interventions to reverse nerve hypersensitivity. By targeting the very early stages of pain development, this research at the University of Liverpool has the potential to develop treatments and preventative strategies.
