{"id":499083,"date":"2026-03-02T09:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T09:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/499083\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T09:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T09:47:10","slug":"women-experience-longer-lasting-pain-than-men-and-scientists-think-they-finally-know-the-reason-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/499083\/","title":{"rendered":"Women Experience Longer Lasting Pain Than Men and Scientists Think They Finally Know the Reason Why"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Credit: Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

In the weeks after an accident or surgery, recovery does not look the same for everyone. Many studies have found that women, on average, experience pain that lasts longer than men\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Scientists have debated the reasons for years. A new study suggests part of the answer lies in the immune system, where certain cells help the body actively switch pain off.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we show is, it\u2019s a real biological mechanism from the immune cells. It\u2019s not in the mind,\u201d Geoffroy Laumet, a physiologist at Michigan State University and an author of the new paper, told NBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An Immune Off-Switch<\/p>\n

Pain is not just a nerve signal. After an injury, immune cells move into damaged tissue and release signals that can increase pain or help calm it down. These signals influence how strongly the nervous system continues to respond.<\/p>\n

Previous studies<\/a> have suggested that males and females may rely on different immune pathways to process pain.<\/p>\n

In a new study, published in Science Immunology<\/a>, Laumet and colleagues focus on a particular immune \u201cbrake\u201d: a molecule called interleukin-10, or IL-10, known for its ability to calm inflammation. In their experiments, IL-10 appeared to dampen pain signals by acting on receptors on sensory neurons.<\/p>\n

The team used mice with inflammation in the skin of their paws, created with a standard lab trigger called complete Freund\u2019s adjuvant. Male mice began to recover faster than females about a week after the inflammation began. The difference was not due to reduced inflammation in males. Instead, their inflamed tissue contained more immune cells producing IL-10.<\/p>\n

Most of the IL-10 came from monocytes, a type of white blood cell. At the injury site, these cells released the molecule, and nearby pain-sensing nerves had receptors that could detect it. When researchers blocked IL-10 from the monocytes, or removed the receptor from the nerves, the pain lasted longer in both male and female mice. <\/p>\n

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The next question was obvious: why did males have more of these cells? Experiments point to hormones such as testosterone. When the researchers gave female mice a potent synthetic androgen (testosterone-like hormone), the females produced more IL-10\u2013positive monocytes and recovered faster. When they removed testosterone sources from males or blocked androgen signaling, males lost that advantage.<\/p>\n

Toward Better Pain Care<\/p>\n

\"High-contrast<\/a>These side-by-side microscope images demonstrate lower IL-10 receptor subunit levels, shown in yellow, in female skin cells (left) than in male cells (right). Credit: Laumet lab<\/p>\n

To see whether the pattern held up in people, the researchers examined data from the AURORA study<\/a>, which follows patients after traumatic injuries such as car accidents in the U.S. At the time of injury, men and women reported similar levels of pain. In the following months, however, pain levels declined faster in men. Researchers also found higher levels of IL-10 in blood samples from men, and those higher levels predicted lower pain later in recovery.<\/p>\n

But no single pathway explains every chronic pain condition. \u201cDoes it explain everything? I don\u2019t think so. We don\u2019t have any single, magical pathway,\u201d Michele Curatolo, a pain specialist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study.<\/p>\n

Still, the work lands in a tense social context. Chronic pain affects huge numbers of people in the United States, and women are overrepresented in many chronic pain disorders. When women describe pain, they often meet skepticism\u2014at home, at work, and in clinics.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of women are taught to hide their pain, because then, if they don\u2019t, people will perceive that they can\u2019t do their jobs, that they can\u2019t take care of their families,\u201d Ann Gregus, a chronic pain researcher at Virginia Tech who was not part of the study, told NBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If the immune system holds an \u201coff-switch,\u201d could medicine press it? In mice, a molecule called resolvin D1\u2014one of the molecules the body uses to bring inflammation under control\u2014boosted IL-10\u2013positive monocytes and sped recovery in both sexes, erasing the sex gap in that model.<\/p>\n

Laumet thinks treatments applied to the skin, such as testosterone-based patches, could potentially limit the side effects associated with hormones that circulate throughout the body.<\/p>\n

For many women, these findings may be vindicating. \u201cThe difference in pain between men and women has a biological basis,\u201d Laumet said. \u201cIt\u2019s not in your head, and you\u2019re not soft. It\u2019s in your immune system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Wikimedia Commons In the weeks after an accident or surgery, recovery does not look the same for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1111,97,227895,5451,5003,1337,120361,139410,9759,49621],"class_list":["post-499083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-chronic-pain","tag-health","tag-il-10","tag-immune-system","tag-inflammation","tag-neuroscience","tag-pain-research","tag-sex-differences","tag-testosterone","tag-trauma-recovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}