Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0423716 (Neuropathic pain)
 1,417 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Neuropathic pain is often a difficult condition to treat. Clinical and laboratory studies using intravenously administered local anesthetics or antiarrhythmic agents support the use of these drugs for the treatment of neuropathic pain. The availability of the oral antiarrhythmic medication, mexiletine, has made it possible to study the effects of an orally administered medication on chronic neuropathic pain. The study used a double-blind placebo-controlled design to examine 11 subjects in whom treatment with conventional pain medications had been unsuccessful. Subjects had a history of peripheral nerve injury or dysfunction, and all complained of symptoms consistent with neuropathic pain. After baseline pain measurements, mexiletine or placebo was given in gradually increasing doses to a maximum daily dose of 750 mg mexiletine. After 1 month at steady state, the subject received the alternative medication. Mexiletine was found to produce a statistically significant reduction in reported pain when compared to baseline or placebo. Pain scores were rated on a scale from 0 (no pain) to 10 (unbearable pain). Median pain scores prior to mexiletine were 7, after placebo treatment 7, and while receiving mexiletine (750 mg/day) 4. Side effects were mild and well-tolerated. Mexiletine may be effective in reducing neuropathic pain for patients in whom alternative pain medications have been unsatisfactory.
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PMID:The use of oral mexiletine for the treatment of pain after peripheral nerve injury. 131 97

Neuropathic pain can be triggered by non-painful stimuli (e.g., light touch), a sensory abnormality termed allodynia. The acute blockade of spinal glycine receptors with intrathecal strychnine induces a reversible allodynia-like state in the rat. We describe the application of in vivo differential normal pulse voltammetry with carbon fibre micro-electrodes for monitoring the catechol oxidation current (CAOC) of the locus coeruleus (LC) in the strychnine model of allodynia. In addition, we tested the effect of mexiletine, a drug useful in the management of clinical neuropathic pain in this model. Our results show that somatosensory processing in the spinal cord of urethane-anaesthetized rats is radically altered during glycine receptor blockade such that the normally innocuous stimulus of hair deflection causes the marked activation of the LC as determined using in vivo differential normal pulse voltammetry. Mexiletine suppressed the LC and cardiovascular responses of strychnine induced allodynia. Results of this study indicate that LC CAOC, an index of LC neuronal activity: (a) is a sensitive biochemical index of strychnine-allodynia; (b) is temporally correlated with the cardiovascular and motor responses evoked by hair deflection during glycine receptor blockade; and (c) can be used to quantitate allodynia in the strychnine model.
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PMID:Use of differential normal pulse voltammetry for the measurement of locus coeruleus catecholaminergic metabolism in an acute anaesthetized rodent model of allodynia: effect of mexiletine. 933 35