{"id":231792,"date":"2026-02-21T05:10:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T11:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/why-chronic-pain-lasts-longer-in-women-immune-cells-offer-clues"},"modified":"2026-02-21T05:10:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T11:10:34","slug":"why-chronic-pain-lasts-longer-in-women-immune-cells-offer-clues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/why-chronic-pain-lasts-longer-in-women-immune-cells-offer-clues","title":{"rendered":"Why chronic pain lasts longer in women: Immune cells offer clues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/why-chronic-pain-lasts-longer-in-women-immune-cells-offer-clues.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Chronic pain lasts longer for women than men, and new research suggests differences in hormone-regulated immune cells, called monocytes, may help explain why.<\/p>\n<p>In a new paper in <i>Science Immunology<\/i>, researchers at Michigan State University found a <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2025-03-pain-medication-effective-women-men.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">subset of monocytes<\/a> release a molecule to switch off pain. These cells are more active in males due to higher levels of sex hormones such as testosterone, the team found.<\/p>\n<p>Females, however, experienced <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2025-11-nerve-injuries-affect-entire-immune.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">longer-lasting pain<\/a> and delayed recovery, because their monocytes were less active. Geoffroy Laumet, MSU associate professor of physiology, and Jaewon Sim, a former graduate student in his lab, discovered the same pattern in both mouse models and human patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chronic pain lasts longer for women than men, and new research suggests differences in hormone-regulated immune cells, called monocytes, may help explain why. In a new paper in Science Immunology, researchers at Michigan State University found a subset of monocytes release a molecule to switch off pain. These cells are more active in males due [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1901],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}