Mechanism of IGF-1 in Pathological Pain / 中国生物化学与分子生物学报

ABSTRACT

Pathological pain is also called chronic pain, including neuropathic pain, inflammatory pain, and cancer pain. These three types of pain mainly come from complications or late effects of various diseases. Pathological pain is a kind of sensation, different from visual, auditory and other independent existence, but mixed with other sensations. It is difficult to distinguish accurately, which brings great difficulties to clinical treatment and patient recovery. Although the search for analgesic targets has been extensively and deeply studied in pain-related fields, there is still a lack of effective therapies or drugs with less or no side effects. Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) is a member of the insulin-like growth factor family, which is widely expressed in the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system and exerts neurotrophic and nerve repair effects, and has received increasing attention in the field of pain in recent years. However, in the study of pathological pain, some scholars have found that IGF-1 plays two opposite roles of neuroprotection and neurotoxicity in the occurrence and maintenance of neuropathic pain and inflammatory pain, which can not only promote the transmission of nociceptive information but also block the transmission of nociceptive information. In cancer pain, it is found that IGF-1 only participates in the transmission of nociceptive signals and then plays a neurotoxic role. This paper briefly reviews the mechanism of IGF-1 participation in three kinds of pathological pain, and discusses the possibility of IGF-1 as an analgesic target.