Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Jan 2011
Effect of continuous posttraumatic intrathecal nocistatin on the development of mechanical allodynia.
The neuropeptide nocistatin has a variety of effects on nociception and other central nervous system functions. It has shown to exert diverging effects on nociceptive behavior in various experimental pain models depending on the dose administered. The inhibitory effect of spinal nocistatin on the release of glycine and γ-aminobutyric acid is thought to be responsible for pronociceptive effects, whereas the antinociceptive action of nocistatin can be attributed to diminished glycine-dependent N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor activation. So far, nocistatin has only been investigated in experimental models of already established pain and has been injected as a bolus. ⋯ Because nocistatin has well-documented effects on established pathological pain, it is conceivable that its effect on nociception is only effective when spinal circuitry is pathologically altered.