• Wanhong Liu, Zhongchun Liu, Li Liu, Zheman Xiao, Xiongbin Cao, Zhijian Cao, Lu Xue, Lixia Miao, Xiaohua He, and Wenxin Li.
• Hubei Province Key Laboratory of Allergy and Immunology, School of Medicine, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, PR China. liuwanhong@whu.edu.cn
• Neurosci. Lett. 2008 Feb 13;432(1):13-8.

AbstractNeuropathic pain is a long-lasting clinical problem that is often refractory to medical management. Gene transfer of specific genes for therapeutic benefit offers a novel approach to the treatment of neuropathic pain. In this study, we tested whether the transfer of the glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) gene to dorsal root ganglion (DRG) cells would attenuate below-injury level central neuropathic pain after spinal cord injury (SCI) by using a novel human foamy virus (HFV) vector to achieve release of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Subcutaneous inoculation of a replication-defective HFV vector, which expresses GAD (vector rdvGAD67) for 7days after T13 spinal cord hemisection, reversed mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia evoked by SCI. The antiallodynic effect lasted 6 weeks and was reestablished by reinoculation. We also found that subcutaneous inoculation of rdvGAD67 resulted in enhanced production of GAD and tonical GABA release from transduced DRG neurons. These results suggest that HFV-mediated gene transfer to DRG could be employed to treat below-injury level central neuropathic pain after incomplete SCI.

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