• Christoforos Tsantoulas and Stephen B McMahon.
• Department of Pharmacology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1PD, UK. Electronic address: c.tsantoulas@gmail.com.
• Trends Neurosci. 2014 Mar 1;37(3):146-58.

AbstractChronic pain is associated with abnormal excitability of the somatosensory system and remains poorly treated in the clinic. Potassium (K⁺) channels are crucial determinants of neuronal activity throughout the nervous system. Opening of these channels facilitates a hyperpolarizing K⁺ efflux across the plasma membrane that counteracts inward ion conductance and therefore limits neuronal excitability. Accumulating research has highlighted a prominent involvement of K⁺ channels in nociceptive processing, particularly in determining peripheral hyperexcitability. We review salient findings from expression, pharmacological, and genetic studies that have untangled a hitherto undervalued contribution of K⁺ channels in maladaptive pain signaling. These emerging data provide a framework to explain enigmatic pain syndromes and to design novel pharmacological treatments for these debilitating states.Crown Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

16 keywords...

hide…