Dr. Lonnie Zeltzer's research focuses on pediatric pain, complementary medicine therapies for pain and other symptoms and quality of life in survivors of childhood cancer.

Zeltzer currently is completing a study examining the roles of anxiety, age, puberty, gender and parents in the development of pediatric chronic pain. There is a large data set now completed on 247 healthy children ages 8 to 17 who underwent four different laboratory pain tasks. There are baseline child and parent measures, as well as lab-based self-report, behavioral, cardiovascular and hormonal data. There is a smaller set of follow-up lab data on a subset of this cohort as well as a cohort of children with chronic pain. Further studies are planned to test the role of parents in children's pain both in the lab and clinically.

Zeltzer's lab also is conducting research in end-of-life care in children and in complementary and alternative therapies for chronic pain and fatigue (yoga, meditation, hypnotherapy, massage, acupuncture). Zeltzer also is studying psychosocial and quality of life outcomes in survivors of childhood cancer. As part of the core team of investigators on a large national study of these survivors and sibling controls, Zeltzer has been analyzing data on risk behaviors, pain and quality of life outcomes and impact of disease and treatments.