Interest in pain is on the rise at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), said Nora Volkow, chief of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, welcoming participants to the 9th Annual NIH Pain Consortium Symposium, held May 28-29, 2014, in Bethesda, US. Volkow noted a significant increase in research funding at the NIH for chronic pain conditions, which amounted to $400 million in 2014, up from $279 million in 2008. That is still just about 1 percent of the entire NIH pie, but in an era of shrinking budgets overall, that is no small progress.
The increase follows the 2010 Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), which mandated a hard look at the state of pain education, care, and research. That legislation led to the 2011 report from the Institutes of Medicine on the public health impact of pain (see PRF related story and commentary).
For those who want to know where that money and other federal funds are going, the NIH recently announced the launch of a database of all the federal grants related to pain (see press release and news coverage). The Interagency Pain Research Portfolio is a publicly accessible, searchable resource that for the first time collects information on all federal research, including efforts by the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Defense, the Food and Drug Administration, and others in one place.The database reflects the Pain Consortium's mission to enhance pain research and promote collaboration across government agencies.
Volkow also announced that on September 29-30, 2014, the NIH Office of Disease Prevention will sponsor a workshop on the role of opioids in treating chronic pain. Prescription opioid misuse, addiction, and overdose deaths have grabbed the attention of physicians, patients, the media, and policy makers, but data that would support the proper use of these drugs for chronic pain are severely limited. The workshop will tackle the scientific issues around opioid use for chronic pain. Registration will open in June. For more information, see 2014 NIH Pathways to Prevention workshop on The Role of Opioids in the Treatment of Chronic Pain.
The theme of this year's symposium was biological and psychological factors that contribute to chronic pain. Over one and a half days, speakers discussed comorbid factors including depression, sleep disturbances, and inflammation. Summaries of selected talks on pain and depression are presented here; Part 2 deals with pain and sleep. In addition, an archived webcast of the entire meeting is available on the NIH website (view Day 1 and Day 2). The complete meeting agenda is here.
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