Statistics — neuropathic pain¶
Last updated: 2026-10-21. Conflicting estimates are shown rather than averaged.
| Measure | Estimate | Population/year | Method | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chronic pain with neuropathic characteristics | 3–17% | General population; studies to 2012 | 21-study systematic review | PMID 24291734 |
| Validated-tool prevalence | 6.9–10% | General population | Screening-instrument studies | PMID 24291734 |
| UK chronic pain | 43.5% (38.4–48.6) | 139,933 adults | Meta-analysis | PMID 27324708 |
| CKD neuropathic pain | 10% (6–15) | 40,678 people | Meta-analysis | PMID 33940112 |
| Painful diabetic neuropathy | 10–20% | People with diabetes | Literature synthesis | PMID 18828198 |
| Pain among diabetic neuropathy | 40–50% | Diabetic neuropathy | Literature synthesis | PMID 18828198 |
| Painful diabetic neuropathy, graded diagnosis | 26.2% (any diabetic neuropathy 58.6%) | 500 consecutively enrolled people with type 2 diabetes | Cross-sectional; examination, nerve conduction, skin biopsy when indicated, neuropathic-pain grading system | PMID 42663556 |
| Painful diabetic neuropathy with GLP-1 receptor agonist vs other treatment | Adjusted OR 0.32 (0.15–0.65) | Same; 140 GLP-1 RA, 152 SGLT2i, 208 standard treatment | Cross-sectional association; not randomized | PMID 42663556 |
| Painful diabetic neuropathy among diabetic peripheral neuropathy | 46.7% (41.8–51.7) | 41 studies; searches through 2024-06-22 | Random-effects systematic review/meta-analysis | PMID 40107621 |
| Painful diabetic neuropathy risk: female sex | OR 1.58 (1.19–2.11) | People with diabetic peripheral neuropathy | Meta-analysis of observational studies | PMID 40107621 |
| Painful diabetic neuropathy risk: BMI ≥30 kg/m² | OR 1.62 (1.43–1.83) | People with diabetic peripheral neuropathy | Meta-analysis of observational studies | PMID 40107621 |
| CIPN month 1 | 68.1% (57.7–78.4) | 4,179 patients | Random-effects meta-analysis | PMID 25261162 |
| CIPN 3 months | 60.0% (36.4–81.6) | Same | Meta-analysis | PMID 25261162 |
| CIPN ≥6 months | 30.0% (6.4–53.5) | Same | Meta-analysis | PMID 25261162 |
| Chronic CIPN (persisting ≥3 months after chemotherapy), overall | 44.50% (40.77–48.25) | 197 studies; 36 countries; 72,794 chemotherapy recipients; search to May 2025 | Random-effects meta-analysis; I²=99%; GRADE very low | PMID 42713463 |
| Chronic CIPN at 3–12 months after chemotherapy | 54.37% (48.24–60.45) | Same | Time-since-completion subgroup | PMID 42713463 |
| Chronic CIPN at 12–24 months after chemotherapy | 37.12% (30.15–44.26) | Same | Time-since-completion subgroup | PMID 42713463 |
| Chronic CIPN at ≥24 months after chemotherapy | 40.36% (34.72–46.08) | Same | Time-since-completion subgroup | PMID 42713463 |
| Chronic CIPN after platinum / taxane regimens | 61.12% (43.08–78.37) / 57.22% (49.99–64.35) | Same | Regimen subgroups | PMID 42713463 |
| CIPN clinical grade ≥2, median 12 months after neurotoxic treatment | 37% (337/901) | 901 people treated with taxanes, platinum, vinca alkaloids, bortezomib or thalidomide; Australian oncology centres | Multisite cross-sectional study; abstract only | PMID 42814908 |
| Dose modification because of CIPN | 31% | Same | Same | PMID 42814908 |
| Dose-limiting CIPN, female vs male | OR 1.7 (1.2–2.5) | Same | LASSO selection then multivariable logistic regression | PMID 42814908 |
| Grade ≥3 CIPN with reduced vs standard oxaliplatin exposure | OR 0.34 (0.21–0.57) | 24 studies (15 RCTs, 9 retrospective); 30,395 patients with GI cancers | Random-effects meta-analysis | PMID 42801795 |
| Disease-free survival with reduced oxaliplatin exposure, adjuvant colorectal cancer | HR 1.06 (0.97–1.17) | Same | Same | PMID 42801795 |
| CIPN at end of taxane treatment (TNS ≥2), cryotherapy vs usual care | 74% (91/123) vs 84% (79/94); P=.071 | 268 randomized, 217 analyzed (CryoPac) | RCT; primary endpoint; abstract only | PMID 42838271 |
| Fall/near-fall hazard with significant CIPN symptoms | HR 2.67 (1.62–4.41) | 116 patients starting taxane/platinum chemotherapy; mean follow-up 62 days | Prospective daily symptom/fall reporting; post hoc secondary analysis | PMID 27183099 |
| Fall-related medical care with vs without significant CIPN symptoms | 25.0% vs 7.1% | Same; 32 with significant symptoms and 84 without | Prospective cohort comparison | PMID 27183099 |
| SCI neuropathic pain | 53% (38.58–67.47) | 2,529 people | Meta-analysis | PMID 27341614 |
| SCI at-level pain | 19% (13.26–26.39) | Same | Meta-analysis | PMID 27341614 |
| SCI below-level pain | 27% (19.89–34.61) | Same | Meta-analysis | PMID 27341614 |
| SCI neuropathic pain, updated estimate | 57% (51–64) | 24 studies; 6,318 adults | Valid-classification systematic review/meta-analysis; I²=96.2% | PMID 41043376 |
| SCI below-level neuropathic pain, updated estimate | 30% | Same | Prespecified level subgroup | PMID 41043376 |
| SCI at-level neuropathic pain, updated estimate | 20% | Same | Prespecified level subgroup | PMID 41043376 |
| PHN after zoster | 5% to >30% | 130 studies/26 countries | Systematic review | PMID 24916088 |
| PHN persisting >1 year | >30% in some studies | PHN cohorts | Systematic review | PMID 24916088 |
| Live zoster vaccine effectiveness against herpes zoster | 45.9% (42.2–49.4) | Adults ≥50; 7 observational studies | Post-licensure systematic review/meta-analysis | PMID 36098300 |
| Live zoster vaccine effectiveness against PHN | 59.7% (58.4–89.7) | Adults ≥50; 3 observational studies | Post-licensure systematic review/meta-analysis; very-low-certainty evidence | PMID 36098300 |
| Recombinant zoster vaccine effectiveness against herpes zoster | 79.2% (57.6–89.7) | Adults ≥50; 2 post-2020 US studies | Post-hoc pooled observational analysis | PMID 36098300 |
| Recombinant zoster vaccine efficacy against PHN | 91.2% (75.9–97.7) | Immunocompetent adults ≥50; pooled ZOE trials | Systematic review; GRADE moderate certainty | PMID 42748460 |
| Recombinant zoster vaccine efficacy against PHN, long-term | 87.5% (64.8–96.8) at 11 years | Long-term trial follow-up with historical controls | Systematic review; GRADE low certainty | PMID 42748460 |
| LZ901 vaccine efficacy against PHN, trial definition | 95.9% (63.9–99.9); 1 vs 24 cases | Adults ≥40, China; 12 months; per-protocol 12,707 vs 12,680 | Phase 3 placebo-controlled RCT | PMID 42733065 |
| LZ901 vaccine efficacy against PHN, pain ≥90 days after zoster onset | 89.0% (41.3–99.4); 1 vs 8 cases | Same | Same trial, alternative PHN definition | PMID 42733065 |
| Recombinant zoster vaccine effectiveness against PHN, immune-mediated inflammatory diseases | 33.6% (11.7–50.0) | 26 studies; 2,238,638 patients with IMIDs | Systematic review/meta-analysis; abstract only; number of PHN-contributing studies not stated | PMID 42896729 |
| Recombinant zoster vaccine against zoster, IMIDs: trial efficacy vs real-world effectiveness | 90.5% (69.1–97.1) vs 59.0% (49.8–66.5) | Same | Same | PMID 42896729 |
| PHN cumulative incidence after zoster in primary care | 8.6% | 735 adults with coded zoster, five Portuguese family health units, 2013–2023 | Retrospective multicentre record review | PMID 42874035 |
| Chronic postsurgical pain after thyroidectomy, 3 months | 18.4% | 16 studies; 1,538 patients | Random-effects meta-analysis | PMID 42854063 |
| “Neuropathic pain” after thyroidectomy, 3 / 6 months | 40.9% (19.5–62.3; I²=97.51%) / 9.5% (6.3–12.6) | Same | Same; see caveat — includes yes/no hypesthesia/paresthesia questions | PMID 42854063 |
| Neuropathic pain at 3 months, perioperative IV lidocaine vs control | RR 0.60 (0.43–0.85); I²=2% | 5 RCTs (of 18 in the review; 1,391 patients overall) | Meta-analysis; trim-and-fill imputed 3 studies | PMID 42865434 |
| Trigeminal neuralgia incidence | 25.33/100,000 person-years (11.87–54.02) | 17 studies; >170 million participants; 1945–2024 | Random-effects systematic review/meta-regression | PMID 41517817 |
| Trigeminal neuralgia annual prevalence | 45.38/100,000 (15.41–133.61) | Same | Random-effects meta-analysis | PMID 41517817 |
| Central post-stroke pain | 11% (7–18) | 69 eligible papers; stroke at any location | Systematic review/meta-analysis | PMID 32451951 |
| Central post-stroke pain present at stroke onset | 26% (18–35) | Patients who developed central post-stroke pain | Meta-analysis of timing | PMID 32451951 |
| Central post-stroke pain developing within 1 month | 31% (22–42) | Same | Meta-analysis of timing | PMID 32451951 |
| Central post-stroke pain developing 1–12 months | 41% (33.9–49.0) | Same | Meta-analysis of timing | PMID 32451951 |
| Any pain in multiple sclerosis | 63% (55–70) | 17 studies; 5,319 adults with definite MS | Systematic review/meta-analysis | PMID 23318126 |
| Neuropathic extremity pain in multiple sclerosis | 26% (7–53) | Adults with definite MS | Syndrome-specific meta-analysis | PMID 23318126 |
| Neuropathic pain in multiple sclerosis, updated | 26.8% | 24 studies at low risk of bias | Systematic review/meta-analysis | PMID 37777076 |
| Neuropathic pain in secondary-progressive MS | 40.3% | MS cohorts in updated synthesis | Clinical-type subgroup | PMID 37777076 |
| Neuropathic pain in primary-progressive MS | 15.6% | Same | Clinical-type subgroup | PMID 37777076 |
| Neuropathic pain in multiple sclerosis, NeuPSIG-graded synthesis | 22.3% (17.3–27.3) | 32 papers; search to 2025-10-14 | Random-effects meta-analysis; I²=97.1% | PMID 42678174 |
| —possible neuropathic pain | 22.0% (16.0–28.0) | 26 studies; 5,399 people with MS | Grade-stratified; I²=97.4% | PMID 42678174 |
| —probable neuropathic pain | 23.7% (19.4–28.0) | 1 study; 374 people with MS | Single study; not pooled | PMID 42678174 |
| —definite neuropathic pain | 23.4% (11.1–35.8) | 5 studies; 2,064 people with MS | Grade-stratified; I²=92.1% | PMID 42678174 |
| Phantom-limb pain after combat amputation | 57% (46–68) | 31 studies; 14,738 military personnel | Random-effects systematic review/meta-analysis; I² 94–98% | PMID 38112578 |
| Residual-limb pain after combat amputation | 61% (50–71) | Same | Random-effects meta-analysis | PMID 38112578 |
| Chronic neuropathic pain after combat injury | 26% (10–54) | Same | Random-effects meta-analysis | PMID 38112578 |
| Neuropathic pain in burn scars at discharge | 66.5% | 915 Burn Model System participants | National longitudinal database analysis | PMID 37916448 |
| Postsurgical neuropathic fraction—breast | 68% | Persistent-pain cases | 281-study review | PMID 23273105 |
| —thoracic | 66% | Persistent-pain cases | Same | PMID 23273105 |
| —hernia | 31% | Persistent-pain cases | Same | PMID 23273105 |
| —arthroplasty | 6% | Persistent-pain cases | Same | PMID 23273105 |
| SNRI NNT for 50% relief | 6.4 (5.2–8.4) | Neuropathic-pain RCTs | NeuPSIG meta-analysis | PMID 25575710 |
| Gabapentin NNT | 7.2 (5.9–9.21) | Same | Meta-analysis | PMID 25575710 |
| Pregabalin NNT | 7.7 (6.5–9.4) | Same | Meta-analysis | PMID 25575710 |
| Capsaicin 8% NNT | 10.6 (7.4–19.0) | Same | Meta-analysis | PMID 25575710 |
| TCA NNT / NNH, 2025 revision | 4.6 (3.2–7.7) / 17.1 (11.4–33.6) | 313 placebo-controlled trials; 48,789 adults; search to 2024-02-12 | NeuPSIG meta-analysis; responder outcome; moderate certainty | PMID 40252663 |
| α2δ-ligand NNT / NNH, 2025 revision | 8.9 (7.4–11.1) / 26.2 (20.4–36.5) | Same | Same; moderate certainty | PMID 40252663 |
| SNRI NNT / NNH, 2025 revision | 7.4 (5.6–10.9) / 13.9 (10.9–19.0) | Same | Same; moderate certainty | PMID 40252663 |
| Capsaicin 8% patch NNT, 2025 revision | 13.2 (7.6–50.8) | Same | Same; moderate certainty | PMID 40252663 |
| Botulinum toxin A NNT, 2025 revision | 2.7 (1.8–9.61) | Same | Same; moderate certainty | PMID 40252663 |
| Opioid NNT / NNH, 2025 revision | 5.9 (4.1–10.7) / 15.4 (10.8–24.0) | Same | Same; low certainty | PMID 40252663 |
| rTMS NNT, 2025 revision | 4.2 (2.3–28.3) | Same; 29 neuromodulation trials in total | Same; low certainty | PMID 40252663 |
| Lidocaine 5% plaster NNT, 2025 revision | 14.5 (7.8–108.2) | Same | Same; very low certainty | PMID 40252663 |
| Neuropathic-pain RCT reports with a blinding assessment | 12.5% (36/288) | Pharmacotherapy and non-invasive neuromodulation RCT papers | Descriptive review | PMID 42751722 |
| Duloxetine diabetic pain NNT | 5 (4–7) | 12-week trials | Cochrane review | PMID 24385423 |
| Opioid mean pain difference | −0.69/10 (−0.82 to −0.56) | 96 chronic-pain RCTs | Meta-analysis | PMID 30561481 |
| Opioid mean function difference | +2.04/100 (1.41–2.68) | Same | Meta-analysis | PMID 30561481 |
| Health utility range | 0.15–0.61 | 24 neuropathic-pain studies | Meta-analysis | PMID 20227832 |
Known conflicts and caveats¶
- Screening prevalence is not probable/definite neuropathic pain.
- CIPN estimates include painful and painless neuropathy and mix agents.
- The 2014 and 2026 CIPN syntheses are not interchangeable: the 2026 estimate counts only neuropathy persisting ≥3 months after chemotherapy completion, pools 197 heterogeneous studies (I²=99%; small-study asymmetry; GRADE very low) and shows no decline between 12–24 months and ≥24 months. Both are kept; neither is a painful-CIPN prevalence.
- The 26.2% painful-diabetic-neuropathy figure and the GLP-1 receptor agonist odds ratio come from one cross-sectional sample of 500 people; the odds ratio is an adjusted association, not a treatment effect.
- The 46.7% painful-diabetic-neuropathy estimate is conditional on already having diabetic peripheral neuropathy; case-finding instruments significantly changed prevalence, so it is not interchangeable with prevalence among all people with diabetes.
- The updated SCI estimate used valid classification systems but retained extreme heterogeneity (I²=96.2%); classification system significantly affected prevalence and the 2016 and 2025 estimates should remain side by side.
- The CIPN fall estimate was a hypothesis generated after data collection in a small, predominantly female cancer cohort; it supports risk surveillance but not a causal effect estimate for every neurotoxic regimen.
- Postsurgical percentages are conditional on persistent pain, not incidence among all operations.
- Zoster-vaccine effectiveness estimates are observational, geographically concentrated and rated very low certainty; the recombinant-vaccine estimate was a two-study post-hoc analysis.
- Recombinant-vaccine PHN estimates conflict by synthesis: the 2026 review of immunocompetent adults ≥50 reports 91.2% efficacy (moderate certainty), whereas a 2024 pooled-RCT meta-analysis cited on the postherpetic page found no statistically significant PHN difference (PMID 39399936). PHN events are few in both. The LZ901 rows show the same trial yielding 24 or 8 placebo PHN cases depending on the definition.
- Trigeminal-neuralgia estimates span eight decades and very wide intervals; changing diagnostic criteria and incorporation of imaging are plausible sources of temporal variation.
- Central post-stroke pain can appear after discharge: the timing categories are conditional on developing the syndrome and are not incidence risks for all stroke survivors.
- The two multiple-sclerosis neuropathic-pain syntheses disagree (26.8% in 2023 versus 22.3% in 2026); the later authors attribute part of the gap to the earlier review's inclusion of studies restricted to people with MS who had pain. The published abstract of the 2026 paper prints the lower bound of the definite-grade interval as 1.11; the full text (PMC13532436) gives 11.1, which is used here.
- The 2025 NeuPSIG NNTs are not directly comparable with the 2015 values: the 2025 analysis pools α2δ-ligands as a class, excludes enriched-enrolment randomized-withdrawal trials and uses a different trial set. Both sets are retained.
- Multiple-sclerosis pain estimates separate all pain from neuropathic pain; the updated clinical-type and sex subgroup estimates should not be interpreted as causal because definitions and study composition vary.
- Combat-amputation estimates have I² of 94–98%, inconsistent case definitions and limited reporting of duration and impact; they are not automatically generalizable to civilian amputation.
- Burn-scar neuropathic pain was self-reported in a rehabilitation database; 66.5% is a discharge-time cohort estimate, not a population incidence rate.
- The thyroidectomy “neuropathic pain” estimate is not neuropathic pain under any grading system: the review's full text states that most studies used DN2/DN4 “or direct questions regarding local hypesthesia or paresthesia”, and the highest contributing proportion (81.6%) came from a telephone question about hypesthesia. It exceeds the review's own chronic-postsurgical-pain estimate (18.4%) for that reason, and should not be compared with neuropathic-pain incidence elsewhere.
- Zoster-vaccine PHN protection depends on immune status: 33.6% effectiveness in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (2026) sits beside 91.2% efficacy in immunocompetent adults ≥50; the IMID figure mixes trial and observational designs, and the abstract does not give the PHN denominator.
- The CIPN 37%/31% figures are cross-sectional at a median 12 months after treatment in a cohort that was 66% female; they are not incidence estimates, and the dose-modification proportion depends on local oncology practice.
- CryoPac's end-of-treatment figures come from 217 of 268 randomized participants with unequal analyzed arms; they are not intention-to-treat estimates.
- NNTs pool etiologies, doses and short trial durations.
- Utility values reflect instrument, condition and severity; they should not be pooled with symptom prevalence.