Emerging Basic and Clinical Studies on Musculoskeletal Pain and Management

摘要

In parallel with life-threatening major diseases such as cardiovascular events, cancers, and diabetes, chronic pain is another leading source of global people's sufferings and disabilities [1]. Pain in the musculoskeletal system seems to be the most common phenotype. More in detail, low back pain is a typical and common disease [2], remaining as top cause of years lived with disability for decades, as revealed by the Global Burden of Disease Study 1990 through 2017 [3]. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are established indicators reflecting clinical symptoms and pertaining severities. PROMs in musculoskeletal diseases may be studied using the visual analogue scale (VAS), Oswestry disability index (ODI), and EuroQol five dimensions questionnaire (EQ-5D). A linking measure between PROMs and clinical manifestation of patients is the threshold of minimal clinically important difference (MCID) [4]. Other linking modalities detecting pain as phenotypes are novel functional diagnostic imaging [5, 6] and genetic studies identifying underlying genotypes [7]. A number of issues still remain challenging for researchers and physicians, including universal classification schemes [8, 9], diagnostic modalities and criteria [10], and novel treatment strategies for musculoskeletal pain [11, 12]. Accordingly, this special issue seeks to cover musculoskeletal pain-related basic and clinical studies.