Basic & clinical pharmacology & toxicology
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Basic Clin. Pharmacol. Toxicol. · Sep 2004
ReviewExperimental human pain models: a review of standardised methods for preclinical testing of analgesics.
Treatment of pain is one of the major challenges in clinical medicine. However, it is often difficult to evaluate the effect of a treatment, as the many symptoms of the underlying diseases often confound this assessment. Furthermore, as the pain mechanisms in many diseases are poorly understood, the limited successful trial and error approach is most often used in the selection of analgesics. ⋯ Examples of the use of experimental pain models in the testing of analgesics are given. With these models the therapeutic spectrum may be defined from a differentiated knowledge on the effect of drugs on the pain system. Such information may be used in the future guidelines for trials and clinical use of analgesics.