About the Pain Working Group
Pain is a prevailing and common symptom across rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMD). Clinically, acute and chronic pain are distinct, are managed differently, and have differences in outcomes. The majority of people who experience acute pain tend to improve spontaneously or under treatment, but some individuals progress to a chronic pain that can cause considerable physical, emotional, and socioeconomic burdens. To identify preventive or effectively tailored interventions, standardized pain assessment in clinical trials is essential to making precise estimates on the effectiveness of interventions.
To establish a research agenda for harmonizing pain assessment in clinical trials in RMD, information is needed regarding:
1) The importance of chronic pain in patients with RMD;
2) To what extent patients with chronic pain and RMD feel different from patients with chronic pain of other origin;
3) Whether the pain experience is different across RMD;
4) The existing pain recommendations in COS for RMD;
5) To what extent pain measurement differs across RMD;
6) The relative contribution of different pain mechanisms (e.g., central sensitization, neuropathic pain) to the patient’s experience of pain

Ernest Choy
Co-Chair

Philip Mease
Co-Chair

Lee Simon
Co-Chair
Working Group Publications
Dialogue on Developing Consensus on Measurement and Presentation of Patient-important Outcomes, Using Pain Outcomes as an Exemplar, in Systematics Reviews: A Preconference Meeting at OMERACT 12
Current State of Reporting Pain Outcomes in Cochrane Reviews of Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain Conditions and Considerations for an OMERACT Research Agenda
Harmonizing Pain Outcome Measures: results of the Pre-OMERACT Meeting on Partnerships for Consensus on Patient-important Pain Outcome Domain Between the Cochrane Musculoskeletal Group and OMERACT
Is chronic Pain a Disease in its Own Right? Discussions from a Pre-OMERACT 2014 Workshop on Chronic Pain
Working Group Members:
Anne Trouvin
Dorcas Beaton
Clifton Bingham
Maarten Boers
Rachelle Buchbinder
Jason Busse
Alessandro Chiarotto
Ernest Choy
Robin Christensen
Philip Conaghan
Maarten de Wit
Maxime Dougados
Niti Goel
Susan Bartlett
Laure Gossec
Fordon Guyatt
Ulrike Kaiser
Bradley Johnston
Peter Juni
Kent Kwoh
Geoff Littlejohn
Anne Lyddiatt
Lyn March
Lara Maxwell
Philip Mease
Andrew Moore
Raymond Ostelo
Kristine Phillips
Damir Sapunar
Lee Simon
Jasvinder Singh
Randall Stevens
Vibeke Strand
Maria Suarez-Almazor
Ann Taylor
Justin Taylor
Caroline Terwee
David Tovey
Peter Tugwell
George Wells
Paula Williamson
Saurab Sharma
Caitlin Jones
Timothy Pickles