Community Support Team in Palliative Care-Group of Health Centers Gaia, 4400-043 Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal.
Faculty of Medicine, University do Porto, 4200-219 Porto, Portugal.
Int J Mol Sci. 2023 Jun 27;24(13):10723. doi: 10.3390/ijms241310723.
In assessing and managing pain, when obtaining a self-report is impossible, therapeutic decision-making becomes more challenging. This study aimed to investigate whether monocytes and some membrane monocyte proteins, identified as a cluster of differentiation (CD), could be potential non-invasive peripheral biomarkers in identifying and characterizing pain in patients with severe dementia. We used 53 blood samples from non-oncological palliative patients, 44 patients with pain (38 of whom had dementia) and 0 without pain or dementia (controls). We evaluated the levels of monocytes and their subtypes, including classic, intermediate, and non-classic, and characterized the levels of specific phenotypic markers, namely CD11c, CD86, CD163, and CD206. We found that the relative concentrations of monocytes, particularly the percentage of classic monocytes, may be a helpful pain biomarker. Furthermore, the CD11c expression levels were significantly higher in patients with mixed pain, while CD163 and CD206 expression levels were significantly higher in patients with nociceptive pain. These findings suggest that the levels of monocytes, particularly the classic subtype, and their phenotype markers CD11c, CD163, and CD206 could serve as pain biomarkers in patients with severe dementia.
在评估和管理疼痛时，当无法获得自我报告时，治疗决策就变得更加具有挑战性。本研究旨在探讨单核细胞及其某些膜单核细胞蛋白（作为分化群（CD）簇）是否可以成为识别和表征严重痴呆症患者疼痛的潜在非侵入性外周生物标志物。我们使用了来自非肿瘤性姑息治疗患者的 53 份血液样本，44 名有疼痛的患者（其中 38 名有痴呆症）和 0 名无疼痛或痴呆症的患者（对照组）。我们评估了单核细胞及其亚型（包括经典、中间和非经典）的水平，并对特定表型标志物（即 CD11c、CD86、CD163 和 CD206）的水平进行了特征描述。我们发现，单核细胞的相对浓度，特别是经典单核细胞的百分比，可能是一种有帮助的疼痛生物标志物。此外，混合性疼痛患者的 CD11c 表达水平显著升高，而伤害性疼痛患者的 CD163 和 CD206 表达水平显著升高。这些发现表明，单核细胞水平，特别是经典亚型，以及其表型标志物 CD11c、CD163 和 CD206，可能是严重痴呆症患者疼痛的生物标志物。
