Anushka Soni
MA BMBCh MRCP DPhil
Clinical Research Fellow
Mechanisms of pain in arthritis
Research
I am a Rheumatologist with a research interest in musculoskeletal pain mechanisms. During my DPhil, I studied the impact of abnormal central pain processing in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. I showed a relationship between the presence of neuropathic pain and central sensitization pre-operatively, and that this modified the patient’s response to knee replacement surgery. Moving forwards, my work will use a combination of techniques, including neuroimaging and clinical pain quantification, to investigate pain related predictors of response to treatment in inflammatory arthritis.
Background
I completed my medical degree at Magdalen College, Oxford in 2003 having obtained a BA Hons (Cantab) in Natural Sciences in 2000. I then completed my general medical training at the Oxford Deanery and moved to the North London Deanery in 2007 to commence my specialist training in Rheumatology. I returned to the Oxford Deanery in 2008 and took up a Clinical lecturer post in 2009. During my specialist training I secured an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship in order to complete a DPhil (Oxon) entitled “Pain Characterisation in Osteoarthritis”. I have now completed my specialist training in Rheumatology and have been awarded a four-year Oxford-UCB Prize fellowship, which I started in September 2017, to advance and translate my work on pain mechanisms to inflammatory arthritis.
Recent publications
Comment on: Exploring the effects of GLP-1 receptor agonists in fibromyalgia: a propensity-matched real-world cohort using the TriNetX research platform: reply.
Journal article
Eshak N. et al, (2026), Rheumatology (Oxford), 65
Towards a tool to discriminate between pain mechanistic descriptors: expert ranking of clinical features and allocation of weights using a forced choice paradigm.
Journal article
Shraim MA. et al, (2026), Pain
Association of nociplastic pain with executive function decline in a longitudinal cohort of middle-age adults. Response to on Br J Anaesth 2026; 136: 1663-4.
Journal article
Kelleher EM. et al, (2026), Br J Anaesth
Brain signatures of nociplastic pain: Fibromyalgia Index and descending modulation at population level.
Journal article
Kelleher EM. et al, (2026), Brain, 149, 1365 - 1380
Serum neurofilament light chain in fibromyalgia: comparative evidence of neuronal injury across chronic pain conditions.
Journal article
Fundaun J. et al, (2026), Pain Rep, 11