The association between vision impairment and multi-site pain in middle-aged and older adults in China: results from the China health and retirement longitudinal study

Our study revealed that Chinese middle-aged and older individuals with VI tended to experience multi-site pain, exhibiting a negative correlation with two coexisting painful sites and a positive correlation with five or more. The association between VI with the coexistence of five or more painful body sites was not influenced by age, gender, or place of residence. These findings suggest that in LMICs, VI often occurs with multi-site pain, and patients with pain could benefit from ophthalmic care and vision rehabilitation. This has major implications for improving healthcare efficiency, service planning, and clinical practice. However, VI was assessed in this study through interviewer observation rather than clinical examinations, which may have introduced misclassification bias, and future studies should validate these associations using objective visual assessments.