Mechanisms of pain
- *Department of Cell Biology, Neurobiology, and Anatomy, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI 53226; ‡Department of Oral and Craniofacial Biological Sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21201; and §Institute of Neuroscience, Shanghai Institute of Life Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China
Abstract
Persistent or chronic pain is the primary reason people seek medical care, yet current therapies are either inadequate for certain types of pain or cause intolerable side effects. Recently, pain neurobiologists have identified a number of cellular and molecular processes that lead to the initiation and maintenance of pain. Understanding these underlying mechanisms has given significant promise for the development of more effective, more specific pain therapies in the near future.
Footnotes
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↵ † To whom reprint requests should be addressed. E-mail: cstucky{at}mcw.edu.
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This paper is a summary of a session presented at the third annual Chinese–American Frontiers of Science symposium, held October 20–22, 2000, at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Science and Engineering in Irvine, CA.
- Abbreviations:
- IB4,
- isolectin B4;
- CCK,
- cholecystokinin
- Copyright © 2001, The National Academy of Sciences
