Following injury, primary sensory neurons undergo changes that drive central sensitization and contribute to the maintenance of persistent hypersensitivity. NR2B expression in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) has not been previously examined in neuropathic pain models. Here, we investigated if changes in NR2B expression within the DRG are associated with hypersensitivities that result from periphe...

BACKGROUND Plastic changes in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are critical in the pathogenesis of pain hypersensitivity caused by injury to peripheral nerves. Cdh1, a co-activator subunit of anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) regulates synaptic differentiation and transmission. Based on this, we hypothesised that the APC/C-Cdh1 played an important role in long-term plastic changes...

BACKGROUND Dysregulation of voltage-gated sodium channels (Na(v)s) is believed to play a major role in nerve fiber hyperexcitability associated with neuropathic pain. A complete transcriptional characterization of the different isoforms of Na(v)s under normal and pathological conditions had never been performed on mice, despite their widespread use in pain research. Na(v)s mRNA levels in mouse ...

The purpose of the present study was twofold. First to characterize endpoints distinct to the reflexive responses to sensory stimuli typically used in neuropathic pain models. A second aim was to evaluate two clinically approved drugs carbamazepine (Tegretol) and pregabalin (Lyrica) against these endpoints with the purpose to backtranslate from the clinical to preclinical setting. The selected ...

Sciatic nerve injury (SNI) results in neuropathic pain, which is characterized by the excessive Ca2+ entry, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and apoptosis processes although involvement of antioxidant Hypericum perforatum (HP) through TRPM2 and TRPV1 activation has not been clarified on the processes in SNI-induced rat, yet. We investigated the protective property of HP on the processes in the sci...

The spared nerve injury (SNI) model of neuropathic pain was first developed by Decosterd and Woolf in 2000 in Sprague Dawley rats to enhance reproducibility of injury and behavioral responses resulting from a partial nerve injury. Given the differences in methodology and inconsistent behavioral data published in the SNI model of neuropathic pain in mice, and given that interspecies behavioral c...

We study two specific features of onsite breathers in Nonlinear Schrödinger systems on d-dimensional cubic lattices with arbitrary power nonlinearity (i.e., arbitrary nonlinear exponent, n): their wavefunctions and energies close to the anti-continuum limit – small hopping limit – and their excitation thresholds. Exact results are systematically compared to the predictions of the so-called expo...

OBJECTIVE Diagnostic selective nerve root injection (SNI) results were analyzed in 101 patients who underwent lumbar or cervical decompression for radiculopathy and compared to surgical outcome 1 year postoperatively. A comparison of surgical outcomes was also examined between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and SNI results. RESULTS Of the 101 patients, 91 (90%) had positive and 10 had negat...

The gene encoding streptolysin O (slo), a cytolysin of hemolytic streptococci, is transcribed polycistronically from the promoter of the preceding NAD-glycohydrolase (NADase) gene (nga). Between nga and slo, a putative open reading frame (orf1) is located whose function has been totally unknown. Present investigation demonstrated that the orf1 encodes a protein designated as streptococcal NADas...