Many people struggle with pain that doctors cannot explain by looking at tissues or nerves. This type of pain is called nociplastic pain. A new review looks at whether stress in early life might play a role in this condition later on. The authors aim to outline a conceptual model that may help guide future research and inform therapeutic strategies. They want to understand if the way we are treated as children affects our pain experience as adults.
The evidence for this connection is not yet strong. Much of what we know comes from studies on stress-related conditions, neuroinflammation, and disorders such as fibromyalgia. These findings are largely inferred from indirect, model-dependent, or related lines of research. The review notes that much of this evidence derives from studies on these other conditions rather than being specific to nociplastic pain per se. Because the data comes from different areas, we cannot say for sure that early life stress causes this specific type of pain.
Scientists still need to clarify the causal pathways. We do not fully understand the relationship between early life social isolation stress and pain problems later in life. The review admits that these pathways remain to be clarified. Until more direct studies are done, we must be careful not to overstate the link. This work is a starting point for better understanding, not a final answer.