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"Chronic pain is a debilitating disorder that can occur as painful episodes that alternates with bouts of remission and occurs despite healing of the primary insult. Those episodes are often triggered by stressful events. In the last decades, a similar situation has been evidenced in a wide variety…
"Networks of the dorsal horn of the spinal cord process nociceptive information from the periphery. In these networks, the excitation–inhibition balance is critical to shape this nociceptive information and to gate it to the brain where it is interpreted as pain. Our aim was to define whether…
"Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that occurs after exposure to a traumatic event. Chronic pain is one of the most frequent comorbidities for patients with PTSD and higher levels of the proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) have been detected in…
"Neuropathic pain arises as a consequence of a lesion or disease affecting the somatosensory nervous system. It is accompanied by neuronal and non-neuronal alterations, including alterations in intracellular second messenger pathways. Cellular levels of 3′,5′-cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP)…
"Inhibiting receptor tyrosine kinases is commonly achieved by two main strategies targeting either the intracellular kinase domain by low molecular weight compounds or the extracellular ligand-binding domain by monoclonal antibodies. Identifying small molecules able to inhibit RTKs at the…
"Objective To evaluate the activity of cold Aδ-type fibers to thermal stimuli above human skin temperature (i.e., >32 °C). Methods Twenty young adults aged 20–24 years participated in this study. The cold-detection threshold was measured from a basal temperature of 40 °C using an adaptive staircase…
"Ligand-gated ion channels (LGIC, also referred to as ionotropic receptors) are important transmembrane proteins that open to allow ions to flow across the membrane and locally modify the membrane potential in response to the binding of a ligand. For more than a decade, a tremendous effort has been…
"Background and purpose: In rodents, morphine antinociception is influenced by sex. However, conflicting results have been reported regarding the interaction between sex and morphine antinociceptive tolerance. Morphine is metabolised in the liver and brain into morphine-3-glucuronide (M3G). Sex…
"Introduction: Early neuronal processing of thermal noxious information relies mostly on molecular detectors of the transient receptor potential family expressed by specific subpopulation of sensory neurons. This information may converge to second-order wide-dynamic-range (WDR) neurons located in…
"Chronic pain affects 20% to 45% of the global population and is often associated with the development of anxio-depressive disorders. Treatment of this debilitating condition remains particularly challenging with opioids prescribed to alleviate moderate to severe pain. However, despite strong…
"Tricyclic antidepressants that inhibit serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake, such as amitriptyline, are among the first-line treatments for neuropathic pain, which is caused by a lesion or disease affecting the somatosensory nervous system. These treatments are, however, partially efficient to…
"Noise and high light illumination in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are recognized as stressors that could alter the well-being and development of vulnerable preterm infants. This prospective observational study evaluated the pain behaviours of very preterm infants (VPIs) to sound peaks…
"Chronic pain is a debilitating disorder that can occur as painful episodes that alternates with bouts of remission and occurs despite healing of the primary insult. Those episodes are often triggered by stressful events. In the last decades, a similar situation has been evidenced in a wide variety…
"Previous studies investigating spatial acuity measured by two-point discrimination threshold concluded that the nociceptive system is less accurate than the innocuous tactile system. In the discussed article, the authors point out that the nociceptive system is more accurate than the tactile system…
"Binge eating, the defining feature of binge eating disorder (BED), is associated with a number of adverse health outcomes as well as a reduced quality of life. Animals, like humans, selectively binge on highly palatable food suggesting that the behaviour is driven by hedonic, rather than metabolic,…
"More than 450 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes, or 1 in 11 people. Chronic hyperglycemia degrades patients’ quality of life and the development of neuropathic pain contributes to the burden of this disease. In this study, we used the mouse model of streptozocin-induced diabetic type 1…
"Background and Objective Neuropathic pain arises as a direct consequence of a lesion or disease affecting the somatosensory system. A number of preclinical studies have provided evidence for the involvement of cytokines, predominantly secreted by a variety of immune cells and by glial cells from…
"Endogenous acetylcholine (ACh) is an important modulator of nociceptive sensory processing in the spinal cord. An increased level of spinal ACh induces analgesia both in humans and rodents while interfering with cholinergic signaling is allodynic, demonstrating that a basal tone of spinal ACh…
"Opioids such as morphine are frequently used for chronic pain management despite their many adverse effects. Ongoing research aims at either finding new treatments to replace opioids or reducing its heavy adverse effects due to long-term use: opioid-induced hyperalgesia and antinociceptive…
"Dopamine influences food intake behavior. Reciprocally, food intake, especially of palatable dietary items, can modulate dopamine-related brain circuitries. Among these reciprocal impacts, it has been observed that an increased intake of dietary fat results in blunted dopamine signaling and, to…