Acute inflammatory response via neutrophil activation protects against the development of chronic pain

Review written by Dr Sandy Hilton info

Key Points

  1. The inflammatory response is crucial to the resolution of acute pain.
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BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE

“Why me?”… Despite years of the study of pain and exploring the transition from acute to chronic pain, there is yet to be an answer for why one person will go on to develop chronic pain while another with a similar onset of pain recovers completely.

This paper explored the transcriptome (1) (complete set of RNA molecules involved in a given cell, tissue, or organism) of low back pain (LBP), temporomandibular pain, and rodent models. The authors cited increasing evidence that chronic pain involves the neuroimmune system (2).

In this paper, the authors explored the relationship between the immune system and the transition from acute to chronic pain and the use of anti-inflammatory medication. The primary objective was to investigate the association between genome-wide transcriptomics and the development of chronic pain following an episode of acute LBP.

There is increasing evidence that chronic pain involves the neuroimmune system.
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The acute inflammatory response is a healthy response.

METHODS

There were 4 separate study groups:

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