Now its time for my OVERALL 2023 favorites, and its a tie! First up is this gem: 'Intervertebral disc human nucleus pulposus cells associated with back pain trigger neurite outgrowth in vitro and pain behaviors in rats' from Sheyn Lab and Laura S Stone science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

and this pretty recent one: 'Deconstruction of rheumatoid arthritis synovium defines inflammatory subtypes' nature.com/articles/s4158… from a large group of authors who I mostly don't know, although I have had the pleasure of getting to know Dana Orange via American College of Rheumatology and AM Malfait

Dana Orange American College of Rheumatology AM Malfait First on the low back pain and intervertebral disc paper: I think that work is a giant advance in our understanding of how disc disease causes pain. I also think that paper gives a new paradigm to use for insightful work on mechanisms of low back pain.

Dana Orange American College of Rheumatology AM Malfait Low back pain affects so many people (including me) yet we lack insight into the mechanisms that cause it, and have few effective therapeutic approaches. I think this paper goes a long way toward moving us into a new era in the field from two great labs Laura S Stone Sheyn Lab

The paper is also an amazing example of doing the really tough work of creating an insightful, human-first approach to disease mechanism and then using that information in really creative ways to move the field ahead with in vitro and animal models.

Now for the rheumatioid arthritis paper: nature.com/articles/s4158…. I absolutely think that this single cell phenotyping in patient population approach is the future for understanding pain (and other symptoms/features) in human disease.

One of the things I realized at American College of Rheumatology meeting (thanks AM Malfait and Tuhina Neogi, MD, PhD for inviting me) is that there are big opportunities for rheumatologists and neuroscientists to work together to use datasets like this to have an impact on the symptoms patients care most about