Bristol researcher awarded fellowship to help change the lives of people suffering with chronic pain

More than a third of the UK population – around 28 million people – are thought to be affected by chronic pain, yet historic under-investment in pain research has led to a gap in our understanding, as well as a lack of effective treatment options.

Chronic pain can have a devastating impact on nearly all aspects of everyday life, both for people directly afflicted by pain and their families. It affects mobility, mood, sleep, and appetite, and can lead to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.

Chronic pain also carries a large societal and economic burden by putting extra strain on healthcare systems, as well as contributing to unemployment and work absence due to sickness. This is estimated to cost the UK economy billions of pounds every year.

Dr Robert Drake from the University of Bristol is one of four exceptional mid-career researchers who will each receive around £300,000 in fellowship funding, in order to help change the lives of people suffering with chronic pain.

Dr Drake is carrying out research exploring how injury affects brain function to cause chronic pain. The award, which is part of a £1.2 million Medical Research Foundation grant, aims to improve pain diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, for the vast number of people who live with unrelenting pain.

Disabling chronic pain has various sensory, emotional, and cognitive components, and there is a pressing need to understand which brain processes underpin their development and why this occurs in some people but not others.

Dr Drake’s research has shown that a loss of function in a neuronal pathway that links the brain and spinal cord is a critical step in the emergence of chronic pain in male rats.

With support from the Foundation, Dr Drake will investigate how this loss of function affects a wider brain network that supports emotional reactivity, coping behaviour and sensory hypersensitivity. He will use state of the art computational methods to identify subtle changes in rodent behaviour related to pain, stress, and pain relief. By combining this with recordings, and the manipulation of brain activity, he will be able to relate brain function to experiences of pain and changes in behaviour.

Another major focus of Dr Drake’s fellowship will be investigating sex differences in chronic pain development.

Women are more than twice as likely to develop chronic pain, compared to men.

Dr Drake says:

“By contrasting the effect of injury on brain function and how this impacts pain-like behaviour in male and female rats, I hope to reveal key mechanisms that differentiate chronic pain development in men and women.

In collaboration with a mental health company, Dr Drake will also assess the therapeutic effects of psilocybin, a psychedelic drug which has shown promise as a treatment for mental health conditions including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. He added:

“If we can demonstrate the therapeutic potential of psilocybin, while identifying which brain pathways are used to deliver any beneficial effects, this could all support the future development of treatments for chronic pain in people.”