Pharmacology of Pain

Pharmacology of pain.

This article discusses the mechanisms of action of the main drugs used to treat pain, in particular inflammatory pain. The drugs are described following a classification based on the steps of pain processing that they primarily affect.

Behavioral pharmacology of pain.

Behavioral methods are extensively used in pain research. Rodent modeling tends to rely on evoked responses but there is a growing interest in behavioral readouts that may capture elements of ongoing pain and disability, reflecting the major clinical signs and symptoms. Clinically, analgesics show greater efficacy in acute pain after standard surgery than in chronic conditions but are never com...

Pain Pharmacology and Analgesia

Spinal cord pharmacology of pain.

The transmission of pain from peripheral tissues through the spinal cord to the higher centres of the brain is clearly not a passive simple process using exclusive pathways. Rather, circuitry within the spinal cord has the potential to alter, dramatically, the relation between the stimulus and the response to pain in an individual. Thus an interplay between spinal neuronal systems, both excitat...

Clinical pharmacology of opioids for pain.

The pharmacological effects of the opioid analgesics are derived from their complex interactions with three opioid receptor types (mu, delta, and kappa; morphine is an agonist at the mu opioid receptor). These receptors are found in the periphery, at presynaptic and postsynaptic sites in the spinal cord dorsal horn, and in the brain stem, thalamus, and cortex, in what constitutes the ascending ...