Descending Control of Nociception Poorly Predicts the Development of Persistent Postsurgical Pain-like Behavior in Consomic Dahl S Rat Strains.

BACKGROUND: Chronic postsurgical pain is a poorly recognized outcome of surgery where patients experience pain long after healing from the surgical insult. Descending control of nociception, a phenomenon whereby application of a strong nociceptive stimulus to one part of the body of animals inhibits pain in remote body regions, offers one strategy to identify a propensity to develop chronic postsurgical pain-like behavior. Here, consomic rat panel was used to test the hypothesis that pain persistence is mechanistically linked to ineffective descending control of nociception. METHODS: Male and female Brown Norway, Dahl S, and eight consomic strains (SS-xBN) were used to determine the presence of chronic postsurgical pain-like behaviors by using paw-withdrawal threshold evaluation (von Frey method) in the area adjacent to a hind paw plantar incision. Descending control of nociception was assessed by measuring hind paw-withdrawal thresholds (Randall-Selitto method) after capsaicin (125 µg) injection into a forepaw. Consomic rats were developed by introgressing individual Brown Norway chromosomes on the Dahl S rat genetic background, as Dahl S rats lack preoperative descending control of nociception. RESULTS: Substitution of several chromosomes from the "pain-resistant" Brown Norway to the "pain-prone" Dahl S/Medical College of Wisconsin reduced mechanical nociceptive sensitivity and increased endogenous pain modulation capacity by differing degrees. Statistical modeling of these data revealed that descending control of nociception is a poor general predictor of the propensity to develop chronic postsurgical pain-like behavior (poor fit for model 1). However, a significant strain-by-descending control of nociception interaction was revealed (model 3, -2*log likelihood; 550.668, -2ll change; 18.093, P = 0.034) with SS-13BN and SS-15BN strains showing a negative descending control of nociception relationship with chronic postsurgical pain-like behavior. CONCLUSIONS: Descending control of nociception poorly predicted which rat strains developed chronic postsurgical pain-like behavior despite controlling for genetic, environmental, and sex differences. Two consomic strains that mimic clinical chronic postsurgical pain criteria and display a strong negative correlation with descending control of nociception were identified, offering novel candidates for future experiments exploring mechanisms that lead to chronic postsurgical pain.

Electrical stimulation of the parabrachial nucleus induces reanimation from isoflurane general anesthesia.

Clinically, emergence from general anesthesia is viewed as a passive process where anesthetics are discontinued at the end of surgery and anesthesiologists wait for the drugs to wear off. The mechanisms involved in emergence are not well understood and there are currently no drugs that can actively reverse the state of general anesthesia. An emerging hypothesis states that brain regions that control arousal become active during emergence and are a key part of the return to wakefulness. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that electrical activation of the glutamatergic parabrachial nucleus (PBN) in the brainstem is sufficient to induce reanimation (active emergence) during continuous isoflurane general anesthesia. Using c-Fos immunohistochemistry as a marker of neural activity, we first show a selective increase in active neurons in the PBN during passive emergence from isoflurane anesthesia. We then electrically stimulated the PBN to assess whether it is sufficient to induce reanimation from isoflurane general anesthesia. Stimulation induced behavioral arousal and restoration of the righting reflex during continuous isoflurane general anesthesia. In contrast, stimulation of the nearby central inferior colliculus (CIC) did not restore the righting reflex. Spectral analysis of the electroencephalogram (EEG) revealed that stimulation produced a significant decrease in EEG delta power during PBN stimulation. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the PBN provides critical arousal input during emergence from isoflurane anesthesia.