REVIEW article
Front. Cardiovasc. Med.
Sec. General Cardiovascular Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2025.1629145
Pain in the body, harm to the heart: Advances in Research on the Impact of Chronic Pain on Cardiovascular Diseases
Provisionally accepted
- 1Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China
- 2General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Chronic pain (CP) is highly prevalent, and a substantial proportion of patients concurrently suffer from cardiovascular diseases (CVD), suggesting a complex interplay between these two conditions. CP increases the risk of CVD through multiple mechanisms, including sympathetic overactivation, neuroimmune inflammatory responses, endocrine and metabolic dysregulation, and bidirectional regulation along the heart-brain axis. Moreover, pharmacological treatments traditionally used for CP, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), opioids and related agents, are associated with heightened cardiovascular risks. In contrast, non-pharmacological interventions like spinal cord stimulation and cognitive behavioral therapy have demonstrated dual potential in alleviating pain and improving cardiovascular outcomes. There is an urgent need to focus on the comorbid mechanisms linking CP and CVD, to develop precise and individualized intervention strategies, and to integrate pain management into cardiovascular prevention and treatment frameworks, thereby optimizing interdisciplinary approaches to comorbidity prevention and care.Chronic pain (CP), as defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), refers to pain that persists or recurs for more than three months, and its development involves a complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors(1). As a chronic condition, CP is increasingly recognized to be closely associated with various cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Emerging evidence suggests that CP serves as a significant risk factor for the onset and progression of multiple types of . A large-scale study involving 475000 adults in the United Kingdom revealed that approximately 8.6% of individuals with CP concurrently suffered from CVD, highlighting a strong association between CP and adverse cardiovascular events(2). Several reports have indicated that patients with chronic chest pain and those with CVD exhibit more frequent ST-segment depression on electrocardiograms and an
Keywords: Chronic Pain, Cardiovascular Diseases, Pathogenesis, Treatment, Comorbidity
Received: 16 May 2025; Accepted: 23 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Wu, Gao and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jian Wang, General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.