PainRelief.com Interview with:
Frank Porreca, PhD
Associate Department Head, Pharmacology
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Professor, Anesthesiology
Professor, Cancer Biology – GIDP
Professor, Neuroscience – GIDP
Professor, Pharmacology
College of Medicine
University of Arizona
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Our research concerns the mechanisms that initiate perception of pain rather than the experience of pain itself.
Pain commonly results from activation of sensory fibers called nociceptors. Nociceptors normally are activated by high intensity stimuli (e.g., like touching a hot stove) but not by low intensity stimuli (like touch itself). But, when there is an injury like a mild inflammation such as a sunburn, then light touch like the rubbing of your shirt on your sunburned neck can produce activation of nociceptors and the perception of pain. This indicates that the thresholds for activation of the nociceptors has decreased so that normally innocuous stimuli can now result in pain. The mechanisms by which the thresholds for activation of nociceptors are decreased are important as this can promote instances of pain from normally nonpainful stimuli, movement of joints, migraine, irritable bowel syndrome, temporomandibular disorder etc…
PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?
Response: Our research shows that the mechanisms that promote decreased thresholds are different in nociceptors taken from male or female mice, monkey or post-mortem human donors. The concept of male and female nociceptors is novel and something that has not previously been a driving force in thinking about how pain may be differentially produce in men and women and for choice of pain therapies.
The implications of our study are that mechanisms that allow activation of nociceptors promoting pain occur in a sex specific fashion and this could allow the development of therapies aimed at treating pain specifically in women or specifically in men.
PainRelief.com: What should readers take away from your report?
Response: Pain may occur from differently in men and women and patient sex should be considered in optimizing therapy for pain. This is a form of precision medicine based on patient genetics – i.e., whether patients are male or female.
PainRelief.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?
Response: Future research will discover many mechanisms that promote pain in a sex specific fashion and this will lead to the development of new medicines that are optimal for treatment of pain specifically in men or specifically in women. The research also has implications for clinical trials of novel therapies for pain in terms of whether the studies are sufficiently powered to detect effects in either sex. This could also affect conclusions about efficacy of previously evaluated therapies that were judged as ineffective but that might have had positive effects in just men or in just women.
PainRelief.com: Is there anything else you would like to add? Any disclosures?
Response: This finding was observed in multiple species suggesting evolutionarily importance.
No disclosures.
Citation:
Stratton H, Lee G, Dolatyari M, Ghetti A, Cotta T, Mitchell S, Yue X, Ibrahim M, Dumaire N, Salih L, Moutal A, François-Moutal L, Martin L, Navratilova E, Porreca F. Nociceptors are functionally male or female: from mouse to monkey to man. Brain. 2024 Jun 3:awae179. doi: 10.1093/brain/awae179. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38829801.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38829801
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Last Updated on June 11, 2024 by PainRelief.com