School of Medicine, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil.
Neurosci Lett. 2012 Apr 11;514(1):62-6. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2012.02.057. Epub 2012 Feb 25.
BDNF is an important marker of neuronal plasticity. It has also been associated with pain processing. Increased BDNF levels are observed in chronic pain syndromes. In order to understand the role of BDNF associated with other factors such as gender on experimental pain we aimed to determine whether experimental heat or pressure pain threshold is correlated with brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) level, gender and age. Heat pain threshold and pressure pain threshold were measured in 49 healthy volunteers (27 females). The multivariate linear regression models (on heat and pressure pain thresholds) revealed a significant effect of gender (p=0.001 for both models), serum BDNF (p<0.004 for both models) and interaction between BDNF and gender (<0.001 for both models). In fact, when adjusting for BDNF levels and age, heat and pressure pain thresholds were significantly reduced in women as compared to men (p<0.001 for both models). These effects were not observed when gender was analyzed alone. These finding suggests that experimental heat and pressure pain threshold is gender-related and BDNF dependent. In fact BDNF has a facilitatory effect on pain threshold in females but has an opposite effect in males; supporting the notion that BDNF is an effect modifier of the gender effects on pain threshold in healthy subjects.
BDNF 是神经元可塑性的重要标志物。它也与疼痛处理有关。在慢性疼痛综合征中观察到 BDNF 水平升高。为了了解与性别等其他因素相关的 BDNF 在实验性疼痛中的作用，我们旨在确定实验性热或压痛阈值是否与脑源性神经营养因子 (BDNF) 水平、性别和年龄相关。在 49 名健康志愿者（27 名女性）中测量了热痛阈值和压痛阈值。多元线性回归模型（针对热痛和压痛阈值）显示出性别（两个模型均为 p=0.001）、血清 BDNF（两个模型均为 p<0.004）和 BDNF 与性别之间的相互作用（两个模型均为 <0.001）的显著影响。事实上，当调整 BDNF 水平和年龄时，与男性相比，女性的热痛和压痛阈值明显降低（两个模型均为 p<0.001）。当单独分析性别时，未观察到这些影响。这些发现表明，实验性热和压痛阈值与性别有关，并且与 BDNF 有关。事实上，BDNF 对女性的疼痛阈值有促进作用，但对男性有相反的作用；支持 BDNF 是健康受试者中性别对疼痛阈值影响的修饰因子的观点。
