BACKGROUND Inflammation is an essential component of arthritis pain. Nerve growth factor (NGF) plays a key role in acute and chronic pain states especially those associated with inflammation. NGF acts through tropomyosin-receptor-kinase A (TrkA). NGF blockade has reduced arthritis pain in clinical trials. We explored the mechanisms within the joint which may contribute to the analgesic effects ...

The pathophysiology of acute joint inflammation remains unclear. Evidence is available to suggest a neurally mediated component to the inflammatory process. Acute joint inflammation in the rat knee, induced by intra-articular injection of 2% carrageenan, was reduced by 44% in animals whose knee had previously been injected with 1% capsaicin, while chronic joint denervation produced a 37% reduct...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic multisystem disease characterized by persistent joint inflammation associated with severe pain. Because RA is an immune-mediated joint disease and because type II collagen is considered an autoantigen, rodent models of arthritis using collagen type II-specific monoclonal antibodies are valuable for studying the pathogenesis of autoimmune arthritis and for ...

INTRODUCTION Endothelins are involved in tissue inflammation, pain, edema and cell migration. Our genome-wide microarray analysis revealed that endothelin-1 (ET-1) and endothelin-2 (ET-2) showed a marked up-regulation in dorsal root ganglia during the acute phase of arthritis. We therefore examined the effects of endothelin receptor antagonists on the development of arthritis and inflammatory p...

INTRODUCTION The western population is ageing. It is unknown whether age at diagnosis affects the severity of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), we therefore performed the present study. METHOD 1,875 RA-patients (7,219 radiographs) included in five European and North-American cohorts (Leiden-EAC, Wichita, Umeå, Groningen and Lund) were studied on associations between age at diagnosis and joint damage...

INTRODUCTION Toll-like receptor (TLR)4 promotes joint inflammation in mice. Despite that several studies report a functional link between TLR4 and interleukin-(IL-)1β in arthritis, TLR4-mediated regulation of the complicated cytokine network in arthritis is poorly understood. To address this, we investigated the mechanisms by which TLR4 regulates the cytokine network in antibody-induced arthrit...

The word "arthritis" means "inflammation of a joint" and "inflammation" is the reaction of a tissue to irritation. Note that the word "infection" does not enter into the definition as yet, although infection may be, and is the most frequent type of, the irritation which brings forth the inflammatory reaction. It is important to an accurate understanding of inflammation, however, that infection ...

Prostaglandins (PGs) are local mediators of several functions in the CNS. Both primary afferent neurons and intrinsic cells in the spinal cord produce PGs, with a marked upregulation during peripheral inflammation. Therefore, the significance of spinal PGs in the neuronal processing of mechanosensory information was herein investigated. In anesthetized rats, the discharges of spinal nociceptive...

Objective(s): This study was undertaken to determine the role of computed tomography (CT)-based methodology to segment the SI joint and quantify the metabolic activity using positron emission tomography (PET). We measured tracer uptake in the right and left SI joints independently to look for differences between the two sides. Further, we correlated tracer uptake with ...