• Mark H Pitcher, Rafael Gonzalez-Cano, Kathleen Vincent, Michael Lehmann, Enrique J Cobos, Terence J Coderre, José M Baeyens, and Fernando Cervero.
• National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. Electronic address: mark.pitcher@nih.gov.
• J Pain. 2017 Jun 1; 18 (6): 716-725.

AbstractVisceral pain has a greater emotional component than somatic pain. To determine if the stress-induced analgesic response is differentially expressed in visceral versus somatic pain states, we studied the effects of a mild social stressor in either acute visceral or somatic pain states in mice. We show that the presence of an unfamiliar conspecific mouse (stranger) in an adjacent cubicle of a standard transparent observation box produced elevated plasma corticosterone levels compared with mice tested alone, suggesting that the mere presence of a stranger is stressful. We then observed noxious visceral or somatic stimulation-induced nociceptive behavior in mice tested alone or in mildly stressful conditions (ie, beside an unfamiliar stranger). Compared with mice tested alone, the presence of a stranger produced a dramatic opioid-dependent reduction in pain behavior associated with visceral but not somatic pain. This social stress-induced reduction of visceral pain behavior relied on visual but not auditory/olfactory cues. These findings suggest that visceral pain states may provoke heightened responsiveness to mild stressors, an effect that could interfere with testing outcomes during simultaneous behavioral testing of multiple rodents.Published by Elsevier Inc.

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