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The BRIDGE Pain Study

The purpose of the study is to discover at least two distinct Musculoskeletal pain subtypes. These types are caused by different brain-and-immune system signals that affect how the body feels pain, and they are also shaped by a person's biology, psychology, and social environment. Aim 1. We want to sort adolescents and young adults with long lasting muscle and bone pain into two different groups. To do this, we will look at participants' childhood medical histories, past treatments, when their pain started, the sex they were assigned at birth, what their pain feels like now, tests of how their body senses pain, and immune system markers found in their blood. We think we will find at least two different types of chronic pain groups, plus one group of patients who had a higher risk for pain (because of a rheumatic disease or past surgery) but never developed long term pain. Aim 2. We want to find out if certain patterns of inflammation in the body change how nerve cells react to pain. Aim 3: We want to understand how different biological, psychological, and social factors are connected to the chronic pain groups we identified. We think we will find certain mental, behavioral, and social risks-as well as protective factors-that help explain why some people develop long-lasting pain and others do not. We expect these factors to play different roles in each pain group, including the group that does not develop chronic pain.