Itching for Insight

Itching for Insight

The itch sensation results from the excitation of primary sensory nerve endings in the skin, but the underlying molecular mechanisms are not completely understood. Liu et al. (2009) now report that some members of the Mrgpr class of G protein-coupled receptors mediate the itch caused by the antimalarial drug chloroquine.

An itching plaque

A 30-year-old woman presented to our hospital in Manacor, Mallorca, with a new lesion on the thorax that had appeared three to four months earlier, had gradually enlarged and was slightly itchy. The patient was otherwise healthy. Physical examination revealed a tender, brownish papule or plaque contacting the elastic band of the underwear under the right breast (Figure 1). The remaining physica...

Wheezing and itching

The development of allergic inflammation requires the orchestration of gene expression from the inflamed tissue and from the infiltrating immune cells. Since many of the cytokines that promote allergic inflammation signal through hematopoietin family receptors, the Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription (STAT) family have obligate roles in pro-allergic cytokine-induced gene regulation...

Itching-related somatosensory evoked potentials.

Electrically evoked itching has the strong potential to be used to investigate the central processing associated with itching at high temporal resolution by employing magnetoencephalography, electroencephalography (EEG), and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. However, it has not been investigated whether time-locked brain activity can be measured using this stimulus, and wheth...

Itching in Syphilitic Skin Eruptions