Objectives The course of pediatric musculoskeletal pain from acute to chronic has not been well described and there is limited understanding of how to identify individuals with new onset pain who may be predisposed to developing persisting symptoms. Thus, the purpose of this study was to describe the clinical phonotype of treatment-seeking youth with new onset musculoskeletal pain compared to youth with and without chronic pain. Further, we tested predictors of pain-related disability and pain sensitivity in the new onset pain sample. Methods Participants were 191 youth ages 10–17 years representing three cohorts (new onset musculoskeletal pain, chronic musculoskeletal pain, and a comparison group without chronic pain). Youth completed questionnaire measures of pain characteristics, psychological functioning, sleep and pain-related disability. They also attended a laboratory visit to complete an experimental pain assessment using heat and cold stimuli to assess pain sensitivity and conditioned pain modulation. Results Findings revealed youth with new onset musculoskeletal pain had a distinct clinical phenotype where symptoms of pain and disability were in the mid-range between those of youth with diagnosed chronic musculoskeletal pain and youth in the community without chronic pain. Linear regressions within the new onset pain sample demonstrated poorer sleep quality and higher pain fear predicted greater pain-related disability, and pain catastrophizing predicted cold pressor sensitivity. Discussion Clinical phenotyping of youth with new onset musculoskeletal pain highlights factors relevant to the pain experience. Future research can examine the roles of these variables in predicting longitudinal risk for chronic pain and disability.

Objectives Screening for psychosocial comorbidity is recommended for pediatric patients presenting at an initial gastroenterology (GI) outpatient consultation. We developed and evaluated the psychometric properties of the GI Screener to address the need for a screening tool specific to pediatric GI patients. Methods 128 patients (8–18 years old, 63% female) and 126 parents completed age-specific versions of the GI Screener and 3 validated psychosocial comparison instruments (The Behavioral Assessment System for Children, The Functional Disability Inventory, The General Functioning scale of the Family Assessment Device) at their initial GI consultation. (30%) of families repeated the measures two weeks later. We identified GI Screener content domains and retained items using exploratory factor analysis. We evaluated internal consistency, construct validity, cross-informant reliability, and test-retest reliability of the trimmed measures. Results Exploratory factor analysis identified two factors in both the parent and child scales: Symptom Impact and Emotional Functioning. Internal consistency estimates for the trimmed scales were good (Cronbach’s alpha >0.75) for both Child and Parent scales. We found that the GI Screener for both patient and parents had good construct validity. Cross-informant reliability between Parent and Child scales at baseline had an estimated correlation of 0.56, while intra class correlation coefficients between baseline and 2-week scores showed high test-retest reliability (>0.7). Conclusions The GI Screener is a brief, valid and reliable measure that can aid in identifying families who are at high risk for psychosocial comorbidity facilitating the targeted delivery of psychosocial intervention and efficient use of health care resources.