Multidimensional symptom burden across sleep, pain, affect, cognition and energy: cross-sectional associations with chronic pain interference and work disability in UK Biobank

The study examined the relationship between five symptom domains (sleep, pain, mood, cognition, and energy) and their impact on chronic pain and work disability in 475,134 participants from UK Biobank. The analysis identified two groups of patients: a lower-burden group (70.5% of participants) and a higher-burden group (29.5% of participants). In the lower-burden group, work disability occurred in 1.3% of participants, while in the higher-burden group it occurred in 10.3%. When four non-pain domains were added to the model, the accuracy of predicting chronic pain increased from 0.593 to 0.672 and work disability from 0.748 to 0.850. The results showed that a multidimensional symptom profile is identifiable at the population level and that non-pain domains provide important information beyond pain burden alone.