Chemotherapy has been known to cause damage to peripheral nerves, and sometimes the pain is chronic and severe enough that chemotherapy doses are reduced or discontinued. But prior research has not given a clear picture of the extent of chronic, painful chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy.

Worldwide, cancer chemotherapy is linked to persistent severe peripheral nerve pain (neuropathy) for around 4 in every 10 patients treated with these drugs, suggests a pooled data analysis of the available evidence,