Acupuncture has been accepted to effectively treat chronic pain by inserting needles into the
specific “acupuncture points”(acupoints) on the patient's body. During the last decades, our …

This paper advances a psychophysiological systems view of pain in which physical injury, or
wounding, generates a complex stress response that extends beyond the nervous system …

Although activated spinal cord glia contribute importantly to neuropathic pain, how nerve
injury activates glia remains controversial. It has recently been proposed, on the basis of …

Spinal proinflammatory cytokines are powerful pain-enhancing signals that contribute to
pain following peripheral nerve injury (neuropathic pain). Recently, one proinflammatory …

Spinal glial reaction and proinflammatory cytokine induction play an important role in the
development of chronic pain states after tissue and nerve injury. The present study …

Interleukin (IL)-18 is an important regulator of innate and acquired immune responses. Here
we show that both the IL-18 and IL-18 receptor (IL-18R), which are induced in spinal dorsal …

Spinal cord injury (SCI) impairs sensory systems causing chronic allodynia. Mechanisms
underlying neuropathic pain have been more extensively studied following peripheral nerve …

Chronic pain, a pathological state, affects millions of people worldwide. Despite decades of
study on the neuronal processing of pain, mechanisms underlying the creation and …

Microglia play a crucial role in the maintenance of neuronal homeostasis in the central
nervous system, and microglia production of immune factors is believed to play an important …

We have previously demonstrated that activation of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase
(p38 MAPK) in the spinal microglia mediates morphine antinociceptive tolerance …