Number of pain sites linked to quality of life in older adults

The more musculoskeletal pain sites an older person has, the lower their health-related quality of life, according to a large study published in Rheumatology.
A total of 12,408 adults over 50 years in the UK completed questionnaires about their mental and physical health. They also shaded sites of pain that lasted more than a day in the past four weeks on a blank outline of the body divided into 44 pain sites. About 72% of respondents were in pain: 5.4% reported a single pain site; 66.3% had pain at two or more sites and 51.6% had pain at four or more sites.
There was a significant association between increasing number of pain sites and poorer mental and physical quality of life. The relationship between number of pain sites and health-related quality of life strengthened with age, but only until 70 to 79 years, and was not strongest among the “oldest old”.
“[The study] builds on results from a study of younger adults (24–76 years old) in which there was a linear relationship between a smaller range of pain sites (1–10) and psychological distress and poor general physical and psychological health,” the authors write.
Recording the number of pain sites a person has could therefore be useful tool when planning interventions to improve quality of life.
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