• Seungmae Seo, Adrienne Grzenda, Gwen Lomberk, Xiao-Ming Ou, Ricardo A Cruciani, and Raul Urrutia.
• Laboratory of Epigenetics and Chromatin Dynamics, Translational Epigenomic Program, Center for Individualized Medicine, GIH Division, Department of Medicine, Physiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA.
• J Pain. 2013 Jun 1;14(6):549-57.

UnlabelledEpigenetic regulation of gene expression is a rapidly growing area of research. Considering the longevity and plasticity of neurons, the studies on epigenetic pathways in the nervous system should be of special interest for both epigeneticists and neuroscientists. Activation or inactivation of different epigenetic pathways becomes more pronounced when the cells experience rapid changes in their environment, and such changes can be easily caused by injury and inflammation, resulting in pain perception or distortion of pain perception (eg, hyperalgesia). Therefore, in this regard, the field of pain is at an advantage to study the epigenetic pathways. More importantly, understanding pain from an epigenetics point of view would provide a new paradigm for developing drugs or strategies for pain management. In this review, we introduce basic concepts of epigenetics, including chromatin dynamics, histone modifications, DNA methylation, and RNA-induced gene silencing. In addition, we provide evidence from published studies suggesting wide implication of different epigenetic pathways within pain pathways.PerspectiveThis article provides a brief overview of epigenetic pathways for gene regulation and highlights their involvement in pain. Our goal is to expose the readers to these concepts so that pain-related phenotypes can be investigated from the epigenetic point of view.Copyright © 2013 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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