What's in a Name for Chronic Pain?
“Nociplastic pain” officially adopted by IASP as third mechanistic descriptor of chronic pain
This article was originally published on the Pain Research Forum on 5 Feb 2018
by Neil Andrews
For decades, pain researchers have set their sights on understanding pain mechanisms—the cellular and molecular machinery underlying chronic pain. In doing so, they became increasingly aware that the terms they used to describe the neurobiological workings of pain did not always match what they had learned.
But now, official adoption by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) of an IASP terminology task force recommendation for a so-called “third mechanistic descriptor” of chronic pain could move the field forward in its efforts to more fully characterize the known pathophysiological mechanisms of pain. The new term, christened “nociplastic pain,” joins “nociceptive pain” and “neuropathic pain” as terms officially adopted by the association to describe the underlying neurobiological basis of chronic pain…
