The primary cause of death in most smoke inhalation toxicoses in small animals is believed to be carbon monoxide (CO) toxicosis. Thermal injury to the respiratory tract is another part of the syndrome in many cases. Toxic injury to the respiratory tract from noxious gases and particulates is often a third significant component of the process. Chapter Sections Smoke Inhalation Methylene Chloride...

Noxious pH triggers pungent taste and nocifensive behavior. While the mechanisms underlying acidic pH sensation have been extensively characterized, little is known about how animals sense alkaline pH in the environment. TMC genes encode a family of evolutionarily conserved membrane proteins whose functions are largely unknown. Here, we characterize C. elegans TMC-1, which was suggested to form...

Aiming to investigate the possibility of electromagnetic fields (EMF) developed by nonionizing radiation to be a noxious agent capable of inducing genotoxicity to humans, in the current study we have investigated the effect of 910-MHz EMF in rat bone marrow. Rats were exposed daily for 2 h over a period of 30 consecutive days. Studying bone marrow smears from EMF-exposed and sham-exposed animal...

OBJECTIVES Although a relationship between pelvic floor dysfunction and lower urinary tract symptoms is described in the literature, the mechanism and pathways need further characterization. We developed an animal model of pelvic floor dysfunction after noxious stimulation of the pubococcygeus (PC) muscle. METHODS Fifteen female adult rabbits were evaluated with cystometry (CMG) and electromy...

A combined study of behavioural and electrophysiological tests was carried out in order to assess the role of metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) in mediating sensory inputs to the spinal cord of the rat. In the behavioural study the responses of conscious animals, with or without carrageenan-induced inflammation, to noxious mechanical and thermal stimuli were observed both before and aft...

BACKGROUND A recent study showed that inhaled furosemide greatly improves experimentally induced dyspnea in humans. The objective of the current study is to test the hypothesis that inhaled furosemide suppresses the behavioral response to airway occlusion without changing the behavioral response to a somatic noxious stimulus in anesthetized animals. METHODS In 10 spontaneously breathing cats ...

BACKGROUND Any organism depends on its ability to sense temperature and avoid noxious heat. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans responds to noxious temperatures exceeding ∼35°C and also senses changes in its environmental temperature in the range between 15 and 25°C. The neural circuits and molecular mechanisms involved in thermotaxis have been successfully studied, whereas details of the therm...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a debilitating and painful disease, the incidence of which increases with advancing age. One of the confounding aspects of OA is that there is a disconnect between the severity of joint degeneration and the intensity of pain reported. This study examined the relationship between age, joint nociception, and joint pathology in an animal model of naturally occurring OA. Dunk...

Nerve injury can lead to mechanical hypersensitivity in both humans and animal models, such that innocuous touch produces pain. Recent functional studies have demonstrated a critical role for descending pain-facilitating influences from the rostral ventromedial medulla (RVM) in neuropathic pain, but the underlying mechanisms and properties of the relevant neurons within the RVM are essentially ...