Abstract
Chronic pain is a leading cause of disability worldwide and its prevalence is likely to increase over the next decades. Treatment for chronic pain remains insufficient and therapeutical advances have not made comparable progress with that for many chronic disorders, thus amplifying the concern on the future burden of the disease. At the same time, and even after decades of intense research, the underlying pathophysiology of chronic pain remains minimally understood. We believe advancing our current understanding of chronic pain requires mechanistically explicit, hypothesis-driven, and clinically focused models. In this review we highlight some of the main findings over the last decades that have contributed to the present knowledge of brain mechanisms of chronic pain, and how such advances were possible due to a reverse translational research approach. We argue that this approach is essential in the chronic pain field, in order to generate new scientific hypotheses, probe physiological mechanisms, develop therapeutic strategies and translate findings back into promising human clinical trials.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 76-89 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Translational Research |
| Volume | 238 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2021 |
Funding
The authors of this article contributed equally to this work and declare to have read the journal's authorship agreement and policy on conflicts of interest. The manuscript has been reviewed and approved by all named authors. Editorial support for preparation of the manuscript was in part provided by National Institutes of Health grant P50 DA044121 and grant R01AR074274-01A1 . The authors declare no competing interests.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- Physiology (medical)
- Biochemistry, medical