BACKGROUND The assessment of pain and nociception in non-communicative patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) is a real challenge for clinicians. It is, therefore, important to develop sensitive standardized tools usable at the bedside. OBJECTIVES This review aims to provide an overview of the current knowledge about pain processing and assessment in patients with DOC. METHODS A sea...

Assessing behavioral responses to nociception is difficult in severely brain-injured patients recovering from coma. We here propose a new scale developed for assessing nociception in vegetative (VS) and minimally conscious (MCS) coma survivors, the Nociception Coma Scale (NCS), and explore its concurrent validity, inter-rater agreement and sensitivity. Concurrent validity was assessed by analyz...

Abnormalities in anatomy and function of the cranial nerve motor nuclei and brain stem structures have been demonstrated in some people with autism and can be modeled in rats by exposure to valproic acid (VPA) during very early nervous system developmental stages (neural tube closure). The aim of this study was to investigate if VPA will have an impact on nociception in rats because of reported...

Prokineticins (PKs), consisting of PK1 and PK2, are a pair of newly identified regulatory peptides. Two closely related G-protein coupled receptors, PKR1 and PKR2, mediate the signaling of PKs. PKs/PKRs participate in the regulation of diverse biological processes, ranging from development to adult physiology. A number of studies have indicated the involvement of PKs/PKRs in nociception. Here w...

Diosgenin is a natural steroid sourced from plants and exhibits good analgesic anti-inflammatory activity. However, mechanism of action associated with the activity diosgenin not yet delineated. Hence, in present study, we explored on nitric oxide/cyclic guanosine monophosphate/adenosine monophosphate sensitive potassium channels (NO/cGMP/kATP). The role (NO/cGMP/kATP) Wistar rat was studied us...

In this study, 12 new 3-methyl-6-(2-substituted aminopropanoyl)-2-benzoxazolinone and 3-methyl-6-(1-hydroxy-2-substituted aminopropyl)-2-benzoxazolinone derivatives have been prepared. Their structures have been elucidated by IR, 1H NMR spectra and by elementary analysis. The anti-nociceptive activity of these compounds has been investigated by using a modified Koster test. It was found that mo...

(R)-(+)-Pulegone is a monoterpene found in essential oils from plants of the Labiatae family. This compound is a major constituent of Agastache formosanum oil. In this study, the effect of (R)-(+)-pulegone on the central nervous system was evaluated. (R)-(+)-Pulegone caused a significant decrease in ambulation and an increase in pentobarbital-induced sleeping time in mice, indicating a central ...

Evidence suggests that the arterial baroreceptors modulate pain. To examine whether cortical processing of nociception is modulated by natural variations in arterial baroreceptor stimulation during the cardiac cycle, peak-to-peak amplitudes of the N2-P2 pain-related potential and pain ratings were recorded in response to noxious laser stimulation at different times during the cardiac cycle in 1...

The neuropeptide galanin is widely expressed in the nervous system and has an important role in nociception. It has been shown that galanin can facilitate and inhibit nociception in a dose-dependent manner, principally through the central nervous system, with enhanced antinociceptive actions after nerve injury. However, following nerve injury, expression of galanin within the peripheral nervous...