Cloudy – with a chance of pain?

8th September 2016 – Evidence is emerging that bad weather really can 'get you down' after thousands of smartphone users reported that rain and cloud can make pain worse.

The study is the idea of Dr Will Dixon, a scientist at The University of Manchester and a hospital doctor at Salford Royal where he looks after patients with arthritis. He says: "In almost every clinic, one of my patients will tell me that their joints are better or worse because of the weather. And yet researchers have never worked out whether this relationship truly exists."

Mass observation project

Using a phone app, the 'Cloudy with a Chance of Pain' project has recruited 9,000 citizen scientists with chronic pain who input their symptoms daily. The app automatically records the weather using their phones' GPS and sends the data back to the researchers.

The study is only at the half-way stage, but Dr Dixon has announced some of the interim results at the British Science Festival this week.

A painful soggy June

These results look specifically at people living in 3 cities, Leeds, Norwich and London. They show that as the number of sunny days rose from February to April, the amount of time people experienced severe pain fell. However, a wet June saw an increase in the length of time people experienced severe pain.

Dr Dixon says: "Once the link is proven, people will have the confidence to plan their activities in accordance with the weather. In addition, understanding how weather influences pain will allow medical researchers to explore new pain interventions and treatments.

"To work out the details of how weather influences pain, we need as many people as possible to participate in the study and track their symptoms on their smartphone.

"If you are affected by chronic pain, this is your chance to do something personally – and easily – to lead to a breakthrough in our understanding of pain."

Participants can also use the phone app to review the data collected so far and see whether other peoples' experience of pain on certain days matches their own symptoms.

'Exciting' results

Dr Stephen Simpson, director of research and programmes at Arthritis Research UK, which is helping fund the project, comments in a statement: "Many people with arthritis report that changes in weather affect the level of pain they experience, but to date there has been no scientific evidence to support this link.

"Although this study is not yet complete, it is potentially exciting that the interim results indicate there might be correlation between the two. The more participants we have in the study, the stronger the final data will be so we're urging people to take part and share their experiences via the Cloudy app."