El receptor α2 adrenérgico de la célula cromafín de la médula adrenal¿una nueva diana para el tratamiento del dolor neuropático?

Abstract

Pain is the first reason for medical consultation in both human and veterinary medicine. Itcan be a symptom that alerts on the presence of a disease that can be specifically treated (nociceptivepain) or may constitute a pathological entity by itself (neuropathic pain), whose fundamentalcharacteristic is the alteration of the processing of nociceptive information. While the therapeuticchallenge in the treatment of nociceptive pain would be the attainment of higher levels of safety ofthe analgesic drugs, in the treatment of neuropathic pain the current situation is marked by the lackof effectiveness. There is therefore a therapeutic gap that demands the development of new drugsacting on new therapeutic targets. The starting hypothesis of this work was to consider neuropathicpain as a stressor capable of originating a response of the sympathoadrenomedullary system which,in turn, contributed to painful manifestations, hence closing a vicious circle whereby pain and stressfeed to each other. To this end, we have implemented the chronic constriction injury (CCI) of thesciatic nerve of the rat as an experimental model for the evaluation of mechanical and thermalallodynia as indicators of neuropathic pain, and, consequently suitable for the evaluation of drugspotentially useful as analgesics...