Marchi Antonio, Vellucci Renato, Mameli Sergio, Rita Piredda Anna, Finco Gabriele
Department of Anaesthesia and Resuscitation, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy.
Clin Drug Investig. 2009;29 Suppl 1:41-6. doi: 10.2165/0044011-200929001-00006.
The value of biomarkers in aiding early diagnosis of disease and predicting response to pharmacologic interventions is well known. The idea that biomarkers may also be used to identify and quantify pain has been investigated in preclinical and clinical studies. Findings from a preclinical study show that inflammatory pain and neuropathic pain have different biomarkers. Further investigations provided mixed results, on the one hand, cystatin C levels in cerebrospinal fluid appear to be a predictive marker for postherpetic neuralgia in patients with varicella-zoster virus, and a pain marker in women experiencing labour pain, but is not correlated with pain duration or intensity. Investigations into potential biomarkers for chest pain showed that cardiac markers used to aid in diagnosis and prognosis of cardiac disease correlate with tissue damage rather than with pain. Further studies are needed to gain insights into biomarkers for pain to enhance pain management practices.
生物标志物在辅助疾病早期诊断和预测药物干预反应方面的价值是众所周知的。生物标志物也可用于识别和量化疼痛这一观点已在临床前和临床研究中得到探讨。一项临床前研究的结果表明，炎性疼痛和神经性疼痛具有不同的生物标志物。进一步的研究结果不一，一方面，脑脊液中的胱抑素C水平似乎是水痘-带状疱疹病毒患者带状疱疹后神经痛的预测标志物，也是经历分娩疼痛的女性的疼痛标志物，但与疼痛持续时间或强度无关。对胸痛潜在生物标志物的研究表明，用于辅助心脏病诊断和预后的心脏标志物与组织损伤相关，而非与疼痛相关。需要进一步研究以深入了解疼痛的生物标志物，从而改进疼痛管理实践。
