• Brain research · Apr 2012

    The thalidomide analgesic effect is associated with differential TNF-α receptor expression in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord as studied in a rat model of neuropathic pain.

    • Pablo Andrade, Veerle Visser-Vandewalle, John S Del Rosario, Marc A Daemen, Wim A Buurman, Harry W Steinbusch, and Govert Hoogland.
    • Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands. p.andrade@maastrichtuniversity.nl
    • Brain Res. 2012 Apr 23;1450:24-32.

    AbstractThe proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) is well recognized as a key player in nociceptive signaling. Yet, therapeutic capitalization of this knowledge requires a better understanding of how TNF receptors (TNFR) contribute to pain. To address this question, we studied TNFR expression in the chronic sciatic nerve constriction (CCI) model of neuropathic pain. CCI and sham operated rats received two subcutaneous injections (one immediately after surgery, the other on postoperative day 5) containing either saline, GABA-reuptake inhibitor (NO-711), insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), ZVAD or thalidomide. Mechanical (using von Frey filaments) and thermal hypersensitivity (Hargreaves test) were assessed preoperatively and weekly during the first four postoperative weeks. Spinal cord dorsal horn samples were collected from animals that were sacrificed at 2 weeks and 4 weeks after surgery, and analyzed for TNFR1 and TNFR2 mRNA levels by qPCR and protein levels by Western blot. Compared to saline, all applied drug treatments resulted in a faster recovery from mechanical and thermal hypersensitivity, yet in a potency order of thalidomide>ZVAD=IGF-1>NO-711. CCI resulted in increased TNFR1 and TNFR2 mRNA and protein levels in the ipsilateral dorsal horn. Thalidomide was the only treatment that attenuated these increases. Finally, animals that showed a poor behavioral recovery were characterized by a significantly higher TNFR1/TNFR2 mRNA ratio. These data show that differential expression of TNFR in the dorsal horn is associated with recovery from pain in this model and suggest that the analgesic effects of thalidomide may act via this mechanism.Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…