Nociceptive, emotional and electrophysiological characterization of the chronic constriction injury model of experimental traumatic neuropathic pain in female Wistar Han rats.
Diana
M.
Rodrigues1, 2*,
Inês
M.
Laranjeira1, 2,
João
Barbosa1, 2, 3,
Diana
Amorim1, 2,
Armando
Almeida1, 2 and
Filipa
Pinto-Ribeiro1, 2
-
1
Life and Health Sciences Research Institute, School of Health Sciences, University of Minho, Portugal
-
2
PT Associate Laboratory ICVS/3B’s, Portugal
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3
Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo, Portugal
Chronic neuropathic pain, affecting 7-10% of the population, is often accompanied by comorbid emotional impairments (depression/anxiety) that adversely affect pain by enhancing nociceptive symptomatology. This condition greatly reduces the quality of life of the patients, as it impairs physical, cognitive, emotional and social functioning, consequently interfering with treatment. Importantly, although chronic pain and emotional disorders are more prevalent in women, only a few publications focus on female animals. While the chronic constriction injury (CCI) model has been shown to mimic human neuropathies in terms of mechanical/thermal hyperalgesia, allodynia and spontaneous pain in both sexes, data on CCI-induced emotional impairments on female rats remains scarce.
In this work, young adult female rats (Wistar Han) were divided into four groups (n=8 per group): gonadally intact females (SHAM/SHAM), ovariectomized females (SHAM/OVX), ovariectomized females with CCI (CCI/OVX) and gonadally intact females with CCI (CCI/SHAM) and the CCI model was induced by placing 4 chromic catgut constrictive ligatures in the common sciatic nerve. Nociceptive testing began before CCI surgery and was performed weekly throughout 5 weeks post-surgery after which the anxiodepressive-like behaviours were also assessed.
In the postoperative period, CCI animals displayed visible gait abnormalities, limping and guarding the affected hind paw, and the development of mechanical (VonFrey test) and cold allodynia (acetone test) from week 1 onwards. While no differences were found between CCI and SHAM animals concerning anxiety-like (elevated plus maze and open field tests) and depressive-like (forced swimming and sucrose preference tests) behaviours, OVX females displayed anhedonic-like behaviour regardless of CCI surgery. Single cell electrophysiological recordings showed changes, in the neuronal activity of areas mediating nociceptive and emotional processing (the rostral ventromedial medulla and the amygdala), in accordance with our behavioural data.
Keywords:
Neuropathic pain (NP),
Anxiety,
Depression,
Chronic constriction injury (CCI),
Electrophysiology
Conference:
XVI Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Neuroscience (SPN2019), Lisboa, Portugal, 30 May - 1 Jun, 2019.
Presentation Type:
Poster presentation
Topic:
Sensory Processing
Citation:
Rodrigues
DM,
Laranjeira
IM,
Barbosa
J,
Amorim
D,
Almeida
A and
Pinto-Ribeiro
F
(2019). Nociceptive, emotional and electrophysiological characterization of the chronic constriction injury model of experimental traumatic neuropathic pain in female Wistar Han rats..
Front. Cell. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
XVI Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Neuroscience (SPN2019).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fncel.2019.01.00016
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Received:
28 Feb 2019;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Diana M Rodrigues, Life and Health Sciences Research Institute, School of Health Sciences, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal, diannamarina@gmail.com