WEDNESDAY, Aug. 14, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Most patients (89.0 percent) with cerebral palsy (CP) have one or more documented pain diagnoses, according to a research letter published online Aug. 5 in JAMA Neurology.

Mark D. Peterson, Ph.D., from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues compared the prevalence of nociplastic, neuropathic, nociceptive, and mixed pain subtypes in adults with CP and examined their association with CP subtypes in a cohort study involving Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries.

Data were included for 24,464 eligible adults with CP, of whom 89.0 and 11.0 percent had one or more documented pain diagnoses and no pain diagnosis, respectively; 15.2 percent had a single pain condition throughout the study, while 73.8 and 29.7 percent exhibited pain multimorbidity (at least two diagnoses) and pain extreme multimorbidity (at least five diagnoses), respectively. The researchers found that the distribution of patients by pain phenotype was 86.3, 45.8, and 16.9 percent with any evidence of nociceptive pain, any evidence of nociplastic pain, and any evidence of neuropathic pain, respectively. Across the cohort, the distribution of patients was 38.8, 30.8, 12.5, 4.1, 2.4, 0.2, and 0.1 percent with nociceptive pain only; nociceptive and nociplastic pain; neuropathic, nociceptive, and nociplastic pain; neuropathic and nociceptive pain; nociplastic pain only; neuropathic pain only; and neuropathic and nociplastic pain, respectively.

“Our finding of 89.0 percent pain prevalence underscores the importance of understanding and treating pain in adults with CP,” the authors write.

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