Local injection to sciatic nerve of DEX reduces pain behaviors, SGCs activation, NGF expression and sympathetic sprouting in CCI rats.

Local injection to sciatic nerve of DEX reduces pain behaviors, SGCs activation, NGF expression and sympathetic sprouting in CCI rats.
Brain Res Bull. 2017 May 04;:
Authors: Wu JR, Chen H, Zhang DX, Jiang K, Yao YY, Zhang MM, Zhou B, Wang J
Abstract
Neuropathic pain has become an intractable health threat, with its profound effect on quality of life. Dorsal root ganglia (DRG) is evidenced to play a crucial role in neuropathic pain. The peripheral nociceptive afferents seem to be essential not only to initiate the process of neuropathic pain, but also to maintain and modulate it. Dexmedetomidine (DEX), a highly selective agonist of α2-adrenergic receptor (α2-AR), has provided significant analgesia in neuropathic pain. In the present study, we found that local injection to sciatic nerve of DEX alleviated heat hypersensitivity induced by chronic constriction injury (CCI). Western blotting revealed that DEX inhibited the over-expression of nerve growth factor (NGF) significantly. Immunohistofluorescence results showed that DEX inhibited glia cells activation and sympathetic sprouting simultaneously in DRG. Our study suggests that DEX attenuates neuropathic pain in CCI rats by down-regulation of satellite glial cell (SGC) activation, NGF expression and sympathetic sprouting.
PMID: 28479215 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Brain Research Bulletin - May 4, 2017 Category: Neurology Authors: Wu JR, Chen H, Zhang DX, Jiang K, Yao YY, Zhang MM, Zhou B, Wang J Tags: Brain Res Bull Source Type: research