• Won Uk Koh, Seong Soo Choi, Jong Hyuk Lee, So Hee Lee, Sun Kyung Lee, Yoon Kyung Lee, Jeong Gil Leem, Jun Gol Song, and Jin Woo Shin.
• Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan, College of Medicine, Pungnap-2Dong, Songpa-Gu, Seoul 388-1, Korea. jaljary@naver.com.
• Bmc Complem Altern M. 2014 Jan 1; 14: 431.

BackgroundDiluted bee venom (BV) is known to have anti-nociceptive and anti-inflammatory effects. We therefore assessed whether perineural bee venom pretreatment could attenuate the development of neuropathic pain in the spinal nerve ligation injured animal model.MethodsNeuropathic pain was surgically induced in 30 male Sprague Dawley rats by ligation of the L5 and L6 spinal nerves, with 10 rats each treated with saline and 0.05 and 0.1 mg BV. Behavioral testing for mechanical, cold, and thermal allodynia was conducted on postoperative days 3 to 29. Three rats in each group and 9 sham operated rats were sacrificed on day 9, and the expression of transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 (TRPV1), ankyrin type 1 (TRPA1), and melastatin type 8 (TRPM8) receptors in the ipsilateral L5 dorsal root ganglion was analyzed.ResultsThe perineural administration of BV to the spinal nerves attenuated the development of mechanical, thermal, and cold allodynia, and the BV pretreatment reduced the expression of TRPV1, TRPA1, TRPM8 and c - Fos in the ipsilateral dorsal root ganglion.ConclusionThe current study demonstrates that the perineural pretreatment with diluted bee venom before the induction of spinal nerve ligation significantly suppresses the development of neuropathic pain. Furthermore, this bee venom induced suppression was strongly related with the involvement of transient receptor potential family members.

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