Rodent Models of Painful Diabetic Neuropathy: What Can We Learn from Them?

Neuropathic pain has recently been redefined by the Neuropathic Pain Special Interest Group (NeuPSIG) to correspond to “pain initiated or caused by a primary lesion or dysfunction in the nervous system” [1]. Its prevalence in general population, all causes combined, is estimated at 1.5 [2] and 6.9% [3]. The development of experimental models of neuropathic pain secondary to lesions of traumatic origin (constriction, partial section, infraorbital nerve ligation, spinal nerve ligation [4-6], etc), metabolic (diabetes, [7]) or toxic (anticancer agent [8] or retroviral [9]) has contributed to a better understanding of their pathophysiology. These models try to stand as close as possible to the symptomatology and / or clinical etiopathogeny of neuropathic pain and are currently used to evaluate new therapeutic drugs.