Treadmill Running on Neuropathic Pain: Via Modulation of Neuroinflammation Provisionally Accepted
- 1General Hospital of Ningxia Medical University, China
- 2Department of Sport Rehabilitation, Xi’an Physical Education University, China
- 3Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, General Hospital of Ningxia Medical University, China
Neuropathic pain is a type of chronic pain caused by an injury or somatosensory nervous system disease. Drugs and exercise could effectively relieve neuropathic pain, but no treatment can completely stop neuropathic pain. The integration of exercise into neuropathic pain management has attracted considerable interest in recent years, and treadmill training is the most used among exercise therapies. Neuropathic pain can be effectively treated if its mechanism is clarified. In recent years, the association between neuroinflammation and neuropathic pain has been explored. Neuroinflammation can trigger proinflammatory cytokines, activate microglia, inhibit descending pain modulatory systems, and promote the overexpression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which lead to the generation of neuropathic pain and hypersensitivity. Treadmill exercise can alleviate neuropathic pain mainly by regulating neuroinflammation, including inhibiting the activity of pro-inflammatory factors and overactivation of microglia in the dorsal horn, regulating the expression of mu opioid receptor expression in the rostral ventromedial medulla and levels of γ-aminobutyric acid to activate the descending pain modulatory system and the overexpression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. This article reviews and summarizes research on the effect of treadmill exercise on neuropathic pain and its role in the regulation of neuroinflammation to explore its benefits for neuropathic pain treatment.
Keywords: treadmill running, neuropathic pain, Neuroinflammation, Analgesic mechanism, review
Received: 28 Nov 2023;
Accepted: 24 May 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 He, Hou, Wang, Xu, Li, Xiong and Luo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dr. Wei-Chun He, General Hospital of Ningxia Medical University, Yinchuan, China