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The Journal of Neuroscience, August 15, 1998, 18(16):6480-6491
Nociceptor Hyper-Responsiveness during Vincristine-Induced Painful Peripheral Neuropathy in the Rat
Kimberly D. Tanner, David B. Reichling, and Jon D. Levine Departments of Medicine, Anatomy, and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Division of Rheumatology, and Program in Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143-0452
Neuropathic pain accompanies peripheral nerve injury after a wide variety of insults including metabolic disorders, traumatic nerve injury, and neurotoxic drugs. Chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain, caused by drugs such as vincristine and taxol, occurs in cancer patients who receive these drugs as antineoplastic agents. Although a variety of remediations have been attempted, the absence of knowledge concerning mechanisms of chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain has hindered the development of treatment strategies. Vincristine, a widely used chemotherapeutic agent, produces painful peripheral neuropathy in humans and mechanical hyperalgesia in rats. To test the hypothesis that alterations in C-fiber nociceptor function occur during vincristine-induced painful peripheral neuropathy, we performed in vivo extracellular recordings of single neurons from the saphenous nerve of vincristine-treated rats. Forty-one percent of C-fiber nociceptors were significantly hyper-responsive to suprathreshold mechanical stimulation. As a population, these mechanically hyper-responsive nociceptors also had significantly greater responses to suprathreshold heat stimulation; however, heat hyper-responsiveness was found only in a subset of these nociceptors and was never detected in the absence of mechanical hyper-responsiveness. In addition, mean conduction velocities of A-fibers and C-fibers in vincristine-treated rats were significantly slowed. Mean heat and mechanical activation thresholds of C-fiber nociceptors, their distribution among subclasses, and the percentage of spontaneously active neurons in vincristine-treated rats were not statistically different from controls. Vincristine does not, therefore, cause generalized impairment of C-fiber nociceptor function but rather specifically interferes with mechanisms underlying responsiveness to suprathreshold stimuli. Furthermore, vincristine-induced nociceptor hyper-responsiveness may involve alterations specifically in mechanotransduction in some nociceptors and alterations in general cellular adaptation mechanisms in others.
Key words: C-fiber; primary afferent nociceptor; neuropathic pain; peripheral neuropathy; vincristine; mechanotransduction
Copyright © 1998 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/98/18166480-12$05.00/0
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