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Neuropathic pain: symptoms, models, and mechanisms
Author(s) -
Beggs Simon,
Salter Michael W.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
drug development research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.582
H-Index - 60
eISSN - 1098-2299
pISSN - 0272-4391
DOI - 10.1002/ddr.20094
Subject(s) - neuropathic pain , medicine , neuropathology , pathological , neuralgia , nerve injury , peripheral nervous system , peripheral nerve injury , peripheral , neuroscience , bioinformatics , central nervous system , disease , anesthesia , psychology , sciatic nerve , biology
Peripheral neuropathic pain is the most debilitating of all clinical pain syndromes and affects a large and growing number of people worldwide. There are diverse causes for peripheral neuropathic pain, which may be experienced after traumatic nerve injury or from diseases that affect peripheral nerves, such as diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and cancer, and it can also result from toxic chemicals, such as cancer chemotherapy agents. Despite these varying causes, it is clear that neuropathic pain is due to persistent pathological alterations resulting in hyperexcitability in the peripheral and central nervous systems, and it is the neuropathology that must be targeted for effective therapy of which there is none presently available. Mechanistically, neuropathic pain is distinct from acute pain and inflammatory pain, for which many effective therapies are known. In this review, we describe the relationships between clinical symptoms and experimental models of peripheral neuropathic pain, and we provide a framework for understanding the potential mechanisms that involve primary neuronal dysfunction as well as pathological changes in neuron‐glial signaling. Drug Dev. Res. 67:289–301, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.