Xin Qing, Bai Bo, Liu Wenyan
Department of Physiology, Jining Medical University, Jining, 272067, China.
Department of Physiology, Jining Medical University, Jining, 272067, China.
Neurochem Int. 2017 Feb;103:57-64. doi: 10.1016/j.neuint.2016.12.021. Epub 2017 Jan 5.
Pain is a ubiquitously unpleasant feeling among humans as well as many animal species often caused by actual and potential tissue damage. However, it is absolutely crucial for our survival in many ways. Acute pain can signal the presence of danger or life-threatenting events, which help escape noxious stimuli. By contrast, when pain becomes chronic or persistent, it becomes an encumbrance and exerts deleterious effects to the body and mind, often co-occured with anxiety and depression. Additionaly, chronic pain is more or less an economic burden for the patients because it requires immediate medical treatments and seriously hinders pepople in their work. To date, there has been a lack of breakthrough progress in the pain field, despite huge gains in basic science knowledge obtained using animal models, it is still difficult to develop many new clinically effective analgesic drugs to control pain with long-term effectiveness. Opioids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were introduced for pain management more than a century ago. Those drugs do have proven efficacy in the treatment of pain but the use of them are also significantly limited due to the multiple serious adverse effects (e.g., drug resistance, addiction and gastrointestinal bleeding). In the field of pain relief and treatment, there is a strong impetus to develop and establish novel analgesics that must be safer and more effective to offer significant pain relief for a wide variety of painful conditions. Preliminary evidence suggests that oxytocin might be the ideal candidate as a target for reducing the severity of pain. In this review, we present a summary of the total literature related to the effects of oxytocin on pain modulation in both animals and humans. Better understanding the fundamental physiopharmacology of the actions of oxytocin in pain may highlight novel mechanisms associated with analgesia.
疼痛是人类以及许多动物物种普遍存在的一种不愉快的感觉，通常由实际的和潜在的组织损伤引起。然而，它在许多方面对我们的生存绝对至关重要。急性疼痛可以预示危险或危及生命的事件的存在，有助于逃避有害刺激。相比之下，当疼痛变得慢性或持续时，它就会成为一种负担，并对身心产生有害影响，常常与焦虑和抑郁同时出现。此外，慢性疼痛或多或少对患者来说是一种经济负担，因为它需要立即进行医学治疗，并且严重妨碍人们工作。迄今为止，疼痛领域缺乏突破性进展，尽管使用动物模型在基础科学知识方面取得了巨大进展，但仍然难以开发出许多新的临床有效的镇痛药来长期有效地控制疼痛。阿片类药物和非甾体抗炎药在一个多世纪前就被用于疼痛管理。这些药物在治疗疼痛方面确实有已被证实的疗效，但由于多种严重的不良反应（如耐药性、成瘾和胃肠道出血），它们的使用也受到显著限制。在疼痛缓解和治疗领域，有强烈的动力去开发和建立新型镇痛药，这些镇痛药必须更安全、更有效，以便为各种疼痛状况提供显著的疼痛缓解。初步证据表明，催产素可能是减轻疼痛严重程度的理想靶点。在这篇综述中，我们总结了与催产素对动物和人类疼痛调节作用相关的全部文献。更好地理解催产素在疼痛中作用的基本生理药理学可能会揭示与镇痛相关的新机制。
