It has been reported that morphine tolerance does not develop in the presence of chronic pain. Therefore, this study was conducted to find out whether chronic inflammatory pain is able to eliminate or attenuate the developed tolerance to analgesic effect of morphine and also to investigate the role of lumbar spinal cord as a candidate site for this interaction. Tolerance was induced in adult ma...

UNLABELLED We examined ultrastructural details such as the cellular component and membrane thickness of human spinal pia mater with the aim of determining whether fenestrations are present. We hypothesized that pia mater is not a continuous membrane but, instead, that there are fenestrations across the pial cellular membrane. The lumbar dural sac from 7 fresh human cadavers was removed, and sam...

Objective(s):Painful diabetic neuropathy is associated with hyperexcitability and hyperactivity of spinal cord neurons. However, its underlying pathophysiological mechanisms have not been fully clarified. Induction of excitatory/inhibitory neurotransmission imbalance at the spinal cord seems to account for the abnormal neuronal activity in diabetes. Protective properties of neurosteroids have b...

Summary: Background: Patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) usually have permanent and often devastating neurologic deficits and disability and pain (1). According to the National Institutes of Health, "among neurological disorders, the cost to society of automotive SCI is exceeded only by the cost of mental retardation"(2). Neurogenic pain constitutes one of the enigmatic clinical sy...

Husch A, Cramer N, Harris-Warrick RM. Long-duration perforated patch recordings from spinal interneurons of adult mice. J Neurophysiol 106: 2783–2789, 2011. First published September 7, 2011; doi:10.1152/jn.00673.2011.—It has been very difficult to record from interneurons in acute slices of the lumbar spinal cord from mice 3 wk of age. The low success rate and short recording times limit in vi...

The recent years brought a growing awareness for the existence of complex neuronal structures within the spinal cord that act as movement controllers. The presented pilot study addresses an extension of pure non-invasive spinal cord stimulation by adding an afferent input from electrically stimulated peripheral nerve. The goal was to assess electrophysiologically the influence of peripheral ner...

BACKGROUND Surgery induces pain and hyperalgesia postoperatively. The products of cyclooxygenases and nitric oxide synthase (NOS) have been implicated in the development of inflammatory pain and hyperalgesia experimentally, and the use of drugs clinically that modify cyclooxygenase activity has been advocated in the management of perioperative pain. However, regulation of these enzymes followin...

BACKGROUND In the present study, we examined spinal glial cell activation as a central nervous system mechanism of widespread mechanical hyperalgesia in rats that experienced chronic post-cast pain (CPCP) 2 weeks after cast immobilization. Activated spinal microglia and astrocytes were investigated immunohistologically in lumbar and coccygeal spinal cord segments 1 day, 5 weeks, and 13 weeks fo...

A 60-year-old patient with testicular seminoma was referred for F-18 FDG PET/CT Study to evaluate recurrence. In addition to hypermetabolic cervical, mediastinal and hilar lymph node tumoral metastases, segmental intense FDG uptake along the lumbar spinal cord suggestive of tumoral metastasis was noted which quite an unusual presentation is. At the time of PET study the patient was symptomless,...