Neuropathic pain: mechanisms and their clinical implications
One article on PainSci cites Cohen 2014: The 3 Basic Types of Pain
PainSci notes on Cohen 2014:
Allegedly aimed at clinicians, this review of neuropathic pain is advanced, technical, and dry, but does offer some useful review and substantiation of a few key points. Neuropathic pain is common, accounting for a substantial percentage of chronic pain, and too complex to treat effectively. There’s so much overlap between neuropathic and nociceptive pain that “many experts view them as different points on a chronic pain continuum, rather than distinct entities.”
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
Neuropathic pain can develop after nerve injury, when deleterious changes occur in injured neurons and along nociceptive and descending modulatory pathways in the central nervous system. The myriad neurotransmitters and other substances involved in the development and maintenance of neuropathic pain also play a part in other neurobiological disorders. This might partly explain the high comorbidity rates for chronic pain, sleep disorders, and psychological conditions such as depression, and why drugs that are effective for one condition may benefit others. Neuropathic pain can be distinguished from non-neuropathic pain by two factors. Firstly, in neuropathic pain there is no transduction (conversion of a nociceptive stimulus into an electrical impulse). Secondly, the prognosis is worse: injury to major nerves is more likely than injury to non-nervous tissue to result in chronic pain. In addition, neuropathic pain tends to be more refractory than non-neuropathic pain to conventional analgesics, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and opioids. However, because of the considerable overlap between neuropathic and nociceptive pain in terms of mechanisms and treatment modalities, it might be more constructive to view these entities as different points on the same continuum. This review focuses on the mechanisms of neuropathic pain, with special emphasis on clinical implications.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Cannabidiol (CBD) products for pain: ineffective, expensive, and with potential harms. Moore 2023 J Pain.
- Inciting events associated with lumbar disc herniation. Suri 2010 Spine J.
- Prediction of an extruded fragment in lumbar disc patients from clinical presentations. Pople 1994 Spine (Phila Pa 1976).
- Characteristics of patients with low back and leg pain seeking treatment in primary care: baseline results from the ATLAS cohort study. Konstantinou 2015 BMC Musculoskelet Disord.
- Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness training compared with normal school provision in reducing risk of mental health problems and promoting well-being in adolescence: the MYRIAD cluster randomised controlled trial. Kuyken 2022 Evid Based Ment Health.