Pain
-
Opioids are the most powerful analgesics available to date. However, they may also induce adverse effects including paradoxical opioid-induced hyperalgesia. A mechanism that might underlie opioid-induced hyperalgesia is the amplification of synaptic strength at spinal C-fibre synapses after withdrawal from systemic opioids such as remifentanil ("opioid-withdrawal long-term potentiation [LTP]"). ⋯ This suggests that glial-cell-derived mediators accumulate in the extracellular space and reach the cerebrospinal fluid at biologically active concentrations, thereby creating a soluble memory trace that is transferable to another animal ("transfer LTP"). When we enzymatically degraded D-serine in the superfusate, LTP could no longer be transferred. Transfer LTP was insensitive to pharmacological blockade of glial cells in the recipient animal, thus representing a rare form of glial cell-independent LTP in the spinal cord.
-
Autonomic responses are an essential component of pain. They serve its adaptive function by regulating homeostasis and providing resources for protective and recuperative responses to noxious stimuli. To be adaptive and flexible, autonomic responses are not only determined by noxious stimulus characteristics, but likely also shaped by perceptual and motor responses to noxious stimuli. ⋯ Multilevel 3-path mediation analyses further specified that motor responses indirectly related to autonomic responses through their close association with perceptual responses. These findings confirm that autonomic responses are not only a reflexive reaction to noxious stimuli, but directly and indirectly shaped by perceptual and motor responses, respectively. These effects of motor and perceptual processes on autonomic responses likely allow for the integration of contextual processes into protective and regulatory autonomic responses, aiding adaptive and flexible coping with threat.
-
Low back pain (LBP) has been inconsistently associated with enhanced pronociceptive and impaired antinociceptive mechanisms. It remains unknown whether alterations are causal, consequential, or coincidental to pain presence. This study investigated pronociceptive and antinociceptive mechanisms in recurrent LBP (RLBP) patients across painful and pain-free periods, compared with age/sex-matched asymptomatic controls. ⋯ Conditioned pain modulation magnitude (increased threshold during conditioning) was lower overall in RLBP participants than in controls (P = 0.021). Enhanced pronociceptive mechanisms were observed in RLBP patients. When pain-free, measures returned to similar levels as controls, except for CPM, which remained impaired.
-
Chronic pain is a common and severely disabling disease whose treatment is often unsatisfactory. Insights into the brain mechanisms of chronic pain promise to advance the understanding of the underlying pathophysiology and might help to develop disease markers and novel treatments. Here, we systematically exploited the potential of electroencephalography to determine abnormalities of brain function during the resting state in chronic pain. ⋯ Furthermore, a machine learning algorithm could differentiate between patients and healthy controls with an above-chance accuracy of 57%, mostly based on frontal connectivity. These results suggest that increased theta and gamma synchrony in frontal brain areas are involved in the pathophysiology of chronic pain. Although substantial challenges concerning the reproducibility of the findings and the accuracy, specificity, and validity of potential electroencephalography-based disease markers remain to be overcome, our study indicates that abnormal frontal synchrony at theta and gamma frequencies might be promising targets for noninvasive brain stimulation and/or neurofeedback approaches.
-
Opioid use for chronic pain is limited by severe central adverse effects. We examined whether activating mu-opioid receptors (MORs) in the peripheral nervous system attenuates spinal cord injury (SCI) pain-like behavior in mice. We produced a contusive SCI at the T10 vertebral level and examined motor and sensory dysfunction for 6 weeks. ⋯ In vivo calcium imaging showed that DALDA (1, 10 mg/kg, s.c.) inhibited responses of small dorsal root ganglion neurons to noxious heat stimulation in Pirt-GCaMP6s mice after SCI. Western blot analysis showed upregulation of MOR in the lumbar spinal cord and sciatic nerves at 6 weeks after SCI. Our findings suggest that peripherally acting MOR agonist may inhibit heat hypersensitivity below the injury level with minimal adverse effects.