Neuroscience letters
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Neuroscience letters · Oct 2015
Tetrodotoxin suppresses thermal hyperalgesia and mechanical allodynia in a rat full thickness thermal injury pain model.
Burn injuries have been identified as the primary cause of injury in 5% of U. S. military personnel evacuated from Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. Severe burn-associated pain is typically treated with opioids such as fentanyl, morphine, and methadone. ⋯ Thermal hyperalgesia and mechanical allodynia were assessed 60 and 120 min post injection on each day of TTX treatment. TTX significantly reduced thermal hyperalgesia at all days tested and had a less robust, but statistically significant suppressive effect on mechanical allodynia. These results suggest that systemic TTX may be an effective, rapidly acting analgesic for battlefield burn injuries and has the potential for replacing or reducing the need for opioid analgesics.
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Neuroscience letters · Oct 2015
Gabapentin attenuates neuropathic pain and improves nerve myelination after chronic sciatic constriction in rats.
Gabapentin (GBP) is an anti-convulsive drug often used as analgesic to control neuropathic pain. This study aimed at evaluating oral GBP treatment (30, 60, 120 mg/kg, 60 min prior to chronic constriction of the sciatic nerve (CCSN) along 15-day treatment post-injury, 12 h/12 h) by monitoring spontaneous and induced-pain behaviors in Wistar rats on 5th and 15th days post-injury during early neuropathic events. CCSN animals receiving saline were used as controls. ⋯ In addition, GPB (60 mg/kg) improved nerve axonal, fiber and myelin area 15 days post-surgery. In conclusion, GBP alleviated mechanical and thermal allodynia and spontaneous pain-related behaviors and improved later nerve morphology. Our findings suggest that GBP improve nerve remyelination after chronic constriction of the sciatic nerve.
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Neuroscience letters · Oct 2015
Three-dimensional alteration of cervical anterior spinal artery and anterior radicular artery in rat model of chronic spinal cord compression by micro-CT.
To investigate the spatial and temporal changes of anterior spinal artery (ASA) and anterior radicular artery (ARA) of chronic compressive spinal cord injury on rat model by three-dimensional micro-CT. ⋯ There was a significant alteration of cervical anterior spinal artery and anterior radicular artery after chronic cervical spinal cord compression. Alteration of ASA and ARA may affect the vascular density of spinal cord and play an important role in neural functional change of chronic cervical spinal cord compression through 3D micro-CT.
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Neuroscience letters · Oct 2015
Action of thymol on spontaneous excitatory transmission in adult rat spinal substantia gelatinosa neurons.
Thymol, which is contained in thyme essential oil, has various actions including antinociception and nerve conduction inhibition. Although thymol activates transient receptor potential (TRP) channels expressed in heterologous cells, it remains to be examined whether this is so in native neurons. It has not yet been examined how thymol affects synaptic transmission. ⋯ This was so, albeit the two thymol activities had similar EC50 values. It is concluded that thymol increases the spontaneous release of L-glutamate onto SG neurons by activating TRPA1 channels while producing an outward current without TRP activation. Considering that the SG plays a pivotal role in modulating nociceptive transmission from the periphery, these actions of thymol could contribute to at least a part of its antinociceptive effect.
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Neuroscience letters · Sep 2015
Structured movement representations of a phantom limb associated with phantom limb pain.
The relation between phantom limb pain (PLP) and the movement representation of a phantom limb remains controversial in several areas of neurorehabilitation, although there are a few studies in which the representation of phantom limb movement was precisely evaluated. We evaluated the structured movement representation of a phantom limb objectively using a bimanual circle-line coordination task. We then investigated the relation between PLP and the structured movement representation. ⋯ When the OI neared 100%, the trajectory changed toward becoming more circular. A significant negative correlation was observed between the intensity of PLP and the OI (r=-0.66, p<0.05). Our findings directly suggest that structured movement representations of the phantom limb are necessary for alleviating PLP.