Patients with chronic pain commonly believe their pain is related to the weather. Scientific evidence to support their beliefs is inconclusive, in part due to difficulties in getting a large dataset of patients frequently recording their pain symptoms during a variety of weather conditions. Smartphones allow the opportunity to collect data to overcome these difficulties. Our study Cloudy with a Chance of Pain analysed daily data from 2658 patients collected over a 15-month period. The analysis demonstrated significant yet modest relationships between pain and relative humidity, pressure and wind speed, with correlations remaining even when accounting for mood and physical activity. This research highlights how citizen-science experiments can collect large datasets on real-world populations to address long-standing health questions. These results will act as a starting point for a future system for patients to better manage their health through pain forecasts.

患有慢性疼痛的患者通常认为他们的疼痛与天气有关。支持他们信仰的科学证据尚无定论，部分原因是难以获得大量患者，这些患者经常在各种天气条件下记录他们的疼痛症状。智能手机使人们有机会收集数据来克服这些困难。我们的研究多云，有疼痛的可能分析了在15个月内收集的2658例患者的每日数据。分析表明，疼痛与相对湿度，压力和风速之间存在显着但适度的关系，即使考虑到情绪和身体活动也仍存在相关性。这项研究强调了公民科学实验如何收集现实世界人口的大型数据集，以解决长期存在的健康问题。这些结果将成为未来系统的起点，让患者通过疼痛预测更好地管理自己的健康。