Mata Lajjiawatti Jain Memorial Nursing Institute, Raikot, Punjab, India.
Columbia Asia Hospital, Patiala, Punjab, India.
Med Hypotheses. 2018 May;114:58-64. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2018.02.033. Epub 2018 Feb 26.
Pain is one of the common and debilitating health manifestations associated with the majority of diseased conditions, thus making it a serious health concern worldwide. While trying to decipher the cryptic mechanism of pain in hope to provide better gene-based therapeutics, researchers have concluded pain to be of multigenic origin making it hard to cure. Apolipoprotein E is a protein coded by APOE gene containing 4 exons, located on chromosome 19q13.2. It is among the key regulators of various crucial body functions such as lipid transport, apoptosis, vitamin k pathway, and cognition, hence, it is highly suspected to play a pivotal role in the nociception process. However, very few studies have tried and succeeded to find a direct involvement of APOE in pain processing. The current article attempts to throw light on some of the major clinical research findings which strengthen the hypothesis stating that apolipoprotein E has a concealed yet deeply embedded association with the pain regulating pathways, through several underlying physiological, biochemical and neurological processes, that in turn, decide the fate of pain sensation in a complex manner.
疼痛是与大多数疾病相关的常见且使人虚弱的健康表现之一，因此成为全球范围内的严重健康问题。研究人员试图破解疼痛的复杂机制，以期提供更好的基于基因的治疗方法，他们得出结论认为疼痛具有多基因起源，难以治愈。载脂蛋白 E 是由 APOE 基因编码的蛋白质，含有 4 个外显子，位于染色体 19q13.2。它是多种关键身体功能的关键调节剂，如脂质转运、细胞凋亡、维生素 K 途径和认知，因此，它极有可能在伤害感受过程中发挥关键作用。然而，很少有研究试图并成功地发现 APOE 在疼痛处理中的直接参与。本文试图阐明一些主要的临床研究结果，这些结果加强了这样一种假设，即载脂蛋白 E 与疼痛调节途径之间存在隐藏但深深嵌入的关联，通过几种潜在的生理、生化和神经过程，以复杂的方式决定疼痛感觉的命运。
