• Simone C Bosshard, Joanes Grandjean, Aileen Schroeter, Christof Baltes, Hanns U Zeilhofer, and Markus Rudin.
• Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University and ETH Zurich, Zürich 8093, Switzerland.
• Pain. 2012 Jul 1;153(7):1450-8.

AbstractLidocaine is clinically widely used as a local anesthetic inhibiting propagation of action potentials in peripheral nerve fibers. Correspondingly, the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) response in mouse brain to peripheral noxious input is largely suppressed by local lidocaine administered at doses used in a clinical setting. We observed, however, that local administration of lidocaine at doses 100 × lower than that used clinically led to a significantly increased sensitivity of mice to noxious forepaw stimulation as revealed by fMRI. This hyperalgesic response could be confirmed by behavioral readouts using the von Frey filament test. The increased sensitivity was found to involve a type 1 cannabinoid (CB(1)) receptor-dependent pathway as global CB(1) knockout mice, as well as wild-type mice pretreated systemically with the CB(1) receptor blocker rimonabant, did not display any hyperalgesic effects after low-dose lidocaine. Additional experiments with nociceptor-specific CB(1) receptor knockout mice indicated an involvement of the CB(1) receptors located on the nociceptors. We conclude that low concentrations of lidocaine leads to a sensitization of the nociceptors through a CB(1) receptor-dependent process. This lidocaine-induced sensitization might contribute to postoperative hyperalgesia.Copyright © 2012 International Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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