Pain and Rehabilitation Center, and Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences, Linköping University, 581 85, Linköping, Sweden.
Swedish NMR Centre at the University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Sci Rep. 2022 Dec 15;12(1):21714. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-26405-6.
Neuropathic pain (NP) is a chronic pain condition resulting from a lesion or disease in the somatosensory nervous system. The aim of this study was to investigate the metabolome in plasma from patients with chronic peripheral, posttraumatic/postsurgical NP compared to healthy controls. Further, we aimed to investigate the correlation between pain intensity and the metabolome in plasma. The metabolic profile in plasma samples from 16 patients with chronic NP and 12 healthy controls was analyzed using a nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy method. Information about pain intensity, pain duration, body mass index (BMI), age, sex, and blood pressure were obtained through a questionnaire and clinical examination. Multivariate data analysis was used to identify metabolites significant for group separation and their correlation with pain intensity and duration, BMI, and age. We found 50 out of 326 features in plasma significantly contributing to group discrimination between NP and controls. Several of the metabolites that significantly differed were involved in inflammatory processes, while others were important for central nervous system functioning and neural signaling. There was no correlation between pain intensity and levels of metabolite in NP. These findings indicate that there seems to be peripheral/systemic differences in the metabolic profile between patients with chronic NP and healthy individuals.
神经病理性疼痛（NP）是一种由躯体感觉神经系统的损伤或疾病引起的慢性疼痛状况。本研究旨在研究慢性周围性、创伤后/手术后 NP 患者与健康对照者血浆中的代谢组。此外，我们还旨在研究疼痛强度与血浆代谢组之间的相关性。采用核磁共振波谱法分析了 16 例慢性 NP 患者和 12 例健康对照者的血浆样本中的代谢谱。通过问卷调查和临床检查获得了有关疼痛强度、疼痛持续时间、体重指数（BMI）、年龄、性别和血压的信息。采用多元数据分析来识别对组间分离有显著贡献的代谢物及其与疼痛强度和持续时间、BMI 和年龄的相关性。我们发现，血浆中有 326 种特征中有 50 种与 NP 和对照组之间的分组差异有显著关系。差异显著的代谢物中有一些参与了炎症过程，而另一些则对中枢神经系统功能和神经信号传递很重要。NP 患者的疼痛强度与代谢物水平之间没有相关性。这些发现表明，慢性 NP 患者与健康个体之间的代谢谱可能存在外周/系统差异。
