Current research activities in our group focus primarily on two clinical areas: understanding and treating chronic pain and evaluation of new weight-loss therapies and their effect on pain and cardiovascular outcomes. Our chronic pain research deal with both musculoskeletal pain, such as osteoarthritis, as well as neuropathic pain, such as in diabetic painful neuropathy. In both of these conditions, we have studies evaluating new, experimental treatments to determine if they are effective and safe, with the goal of being able to assist in getting these drugs approved for marketing in the United States. We also are doing NIH-funded research to try to be able to predict which of the available drugs used for knee OA may be of most benefit to specific individuals, leading to personalized medicine which would be more effective and better tolerated. In addition, we have begun a series of research studies with representatives of the new family of drugs used for weight-loss, evaluating their efficacy and safety as well as what effects weight loss will have on outcomes such as knee pain in people with osteoarthritis and overall cardiovascular safety.