Pain and Neuroimmune Interactions [Hardcover]

For those of us involved in research on the neural mechanisms that relate tissue damage to pain. it is becoming more evident that the sensation of pain and suffering could be considered as part of a mechanism that involves not only sizeable areas in the brain but also simultaneous activations of the immune and the endocrine systems as well. A consensus is growing among specialists in the field that pain involves the sharing of molecular mechanisms between the nervous, immune and endocrine systems that can interact at peripheral and, ultimately, central levels. Furthermore, chronic pain could then be looked upon as a corollary of the imbalance in the cross talk between these systems, which could lead to new treatment strategies. The aim of this book is not to deal with acute pain that serves as an alarm signal, but to attempt to explain the molecular mechanisms of chronic pains considered as a multifactorial syndrome or disease.1. Persistent hyperalgesia and cytokines.- 2. Nociceptor excitation by sensitization: A novel hypothesis, its cellular and molecular background.- 3. Tachykinins in visceral pain and hyperalgesia.- 4. Bradykinin, cytokines and inflammatory hyperalgesia.- 5. Neurotransmitter and inflammatory correlates in experimental neuropathy: Modulation by electric spinal cord stimulation.- 6. Diffuse noxious inhibitory controls and arthritis in the rat.- 7. NSAIDs and some safe strategies of their use: spinal c-fos protein studies in carrageenan model of inflammatory nociceptive processes.- 8. The role of dorsal root reflexes in neurogenic inflammation and pain.- 9. Pain and neurogenic inflammation: A neural substrate for neuroendocrine  immune interactions.- 10. Thymic peptides: Transmitters between the neuroendocrine and the immune system.- 11. Thymulin and inflammatory pain: A possible substrate for PGE-2 dependent neuroimmune loop.- 12. The role of peripheral and brain-borne cytokines in immune-neuro-endocrine interactions.- 13. Interleukin-1 receptorslc²