Articles: neuralgia.
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Case Reports
Ultrasound-Guided Nerve Block with Botulinum Toxin Type A for Intractable Neuropathic Pain.
Neuropathic pain includes postherpetic neuralgia (PHN), painful diabetic neuropathy (PDN), and trigeminal neuralgia, and so on. Although various drugs have been tried to treat neuropathic pain, the effectiveness of the drugs sometimes may be limited for chronic intractable neuropathic pain, especially when they cannot be used at an adequate dose, due to undesirable severe side effects and the underlying disease itself. Botulinum toxin type A (BoNT-A) has been known for its analgesic effect in various pain conditions. ⋯ We injected 50 Botox units (BOTOX(®), Allergan Inc., Irvine, CA, USA) into brachial plexus and lumbar plexus, respectively, under ultrasound. Their pain was significantly decreased for about 4-5 months. Ultrasound-guided nerve block with BoNT-A may be an effective analgesic modality in a chronic intractable neuropathic pain especially when conventional treatment failed to achieve adequate pain relief.
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Sex differences play a role in pain sensitivity, efficacy of analgesic drugs and prevalence of neuropathic pain, even if the underlying mechanisms are far from being understood. We demonstrate that male and female mice react differently to structural and functional changes induced by sciatic nerve ligature, used as model of neuropathic pain. ⋯ Parallel to pain attenuation, 17β-estradiol treated-mice show a functional improvement of the injured limb, a faster regenerative process of the peripheral nerve and a decreased neuropathy-induced gliosis. These results indicate beneficial effects of 17β-estradiol on neuropathic pain and neuronal regeneration and focuses on the importance of considering gonadal hormones also in clinical studies.
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Prog. Neuropsychopharmacol. Biol. Psychiatry · Jan 2016
Beneficial properties of maraviroc on neuropathic pain development and opioid effectiveness in rats.
Targeting chemokine signaling pathways is crucial in neuropathy development. In this study, we investigated the influence of chronic administration of maraviroc (CCR5 antagonist) on nociception and opioid effectiveness during neuropathy, which develops as a result of chronic constriction injury (CCI) of the sciatic nerve. To investigate the mechanism of action of maraviroc, we measured the expression of glial cell markers, CCR5 and certain CCR5 ligands (CCL3, CCL4, CCL5, CCL7, CCL11), in the spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia (DRG) of vehicle- and maraviroc-treated, CCI-exposed rats. ⋯ In vitro primary culture studies showed that CCL3, CCL4, CCL5 and CCL7 (but not CCL11) were of microglial and astroglial origin and were up-regulated after LPS stimulation. Our results indicate that maraviroc not only attenuated the development of neuropathic pain symptoms due to significant modulation of neuroimmune interactions but also intensified the analgesic properties of morphine and buprenorphine. In sum, our results suggest the pharmacological modulation of CCR5 by maraviroc as a novel therapeutic approach for co-treatment of patients receiving opioid therapy for neuropathy.
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J Pain Palliat Care Pharmacother · Jan 2016
Clinical TrialMinocycline Does Not Decrease Intensity of Neuropathic Pain Intensity, But Does Improve Its Affective Dimension.
Recent understanding of the neuron-glia communication shed light on an important role of microglia to develop neuropathic pain The analgesic effect of minocycline on neuropathic pain is promising but it remains unclear in clinical settings. This study included 20 patients with neuropathic pain of varied etiologies. We administered 100 mg/day of minocycline for 1 week and then 200 mg/day for 3 weeks, as an open-label adjunct to conventional analgesics. ⋯ There was no significant improvement in the scoring of NRS (5.6 ± 1.2 at baseline vs. 5.3 ± 1.9 at 4 weeks; P =.60). The total score of the SF-MPQ decreased significantly (17.2 ± 7.4 vs. 13.9 ± 9.6; P =.02), particularly in the affective subscale (4.4 ± 2.7 vs. 3.3 ± 3.6; P =.007) but not so in the sensory subscale (12.8 ± 5.2 vs. 10.6 ± 6.2; P =.06). We conclude that minocycline failed to decrease pain intensity but succeeded in reducing the affective dimension associated with neuropathic pain.
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PainDETECT (PD-Q) is a patient reported screening questionnaire to identify patients with neuropathic pain based on questions regarding typically sensory symptoms of neuropathic pain. The aim of the present investigation was to assess the test-retest stability of pain descriptors of the PD-Q within a time window of 1-3 weeks. ⋯ The individual PD-Q pain descriptors showed accurate test-retest stability as a prerequisite for use in repeated measurements (e. g. post baseline or follow up data) in clinical trials.