Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Nov 2007
Case ReportsBee stings--a remedy for postherpetic neuralgia? A case report.
This case report describes the effects of bee stings on painful postherpetic neuralgia in a 51-year-old man. ⋯ Bee venom and bee sting therapy have been shown to have both antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory properties, which may explain why the bee stings relieved the patient's postherpetic neuralgia. Bee sting or bee venom therapy should be further investigated as a potential treatment modality for postherpetic neuralgia.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Nov 2007
Local anesthetics have different mechanisms and sites of action at recombinant 5-HT3 receptors.
In addition to their blockade of voltage-dependent sodium channels, the action of local anesthetics at 5-hydroxytryptamine-3 (5-HT3) receptors may be clinically relevant. Because local anesthetics have different clinical properties, we have tested the hypothesis that differences in interactions at the 5-HT3 receptor may be clinically relevant by investigating the effects of 4 local anesthetics on recombinant wild-type and 4 mutant 5-HT3A receptors. ⋯ The ester type local anesthetics, procaine and tetracaine, may act at a different site on the 5-HT(3A) receptor and with a different mechanism than the amide-type local anesthetics. Clinical differences between local anesthetics may be at least partially due to differences in interactions at the 5-HT3A receptor.