Is it time to take a sex and gender approach to childhood pain?

Abstract

There are well known sex and gender differences in the perception and experience of pain. The general finding is that females report more pain than males, across a range of painful conditions and situations. Mechanisms are thought to be wider ranging, with biological and psychosocial factors known to contribute to such differences. However, the vast majority of research focuses on adults, and few studies consider sex and gender issues in pain within childhood. This is surprising given the potential role that psychosocial factors, especially early social learning, are likely to play in the formation of pain behaviours e.g., coping styles, pain expression, analgesic use. The purpose of this discussion will be to challenge each of the speakers to consider the relative roles that both sex and gender play in understanding the results from their respective studies. It will start with a short overview of the background, and place this within an international context, where we are starting to see some funders of health research require their researchers to consider sex and gender in study design and analysis. The discussion will challenge speakers and the audience to consider whether we should consider sex and gender as a standard approach to the investigation and treatment of pain in children (and adults), and if so, what the potential implications might be.