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Pain

A painful addiction

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 14, page 739 (2013)Cite this article

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The authors used several mouse models of pain, including the unilateral injection of complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) into the hindpaw plantar region. In the CFA model, recovery from inflammatory hyperalgesia, spontaneous pain and affective pain occurs within 10 days.

The authors found that NTX administration 21 days after CFA (CFA-21d) reinstated hyperalgesia, as did intrathecal administration of CTOP, a selective blocker of the μ-opioid receptor (MOR). The authors reasoned that although the acute inflammatory response in CFA-21d mice had subsided, a longer lasting central sensitization might remain in the spinal cord for more than 6 months and that this was being masked by a compensatory, homeostatic increase in tonic MOR activity.

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References

  1. Corder, G. et al. Constitutive μ-opioid receptor activity leads to long-term endogenous analgesia and dependence. Science 341, 1394–1399 (2013)

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  1. Sian Lewis
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Lewis, S. A painful addiction. Nat Rev Neurosci 14, 739 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3619

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