Analgesia Methods and Protocols

Chronic pain is a complex phenomenon, which continues to remain undertreated in the majority of affected patients thus representing a significant unmet medical need, but the development of cellular, subcellular, and molecular methods of approaching this epidemic of pain shows great promise. In Analgesia: Methods and Protocols, experts in the field present thorough coverage of molecular analgesia research methods from target discovery through target validation and clinical testing to tolerance and dependence, with extensive chapters on emerging receptor classes as targets for analgesic drugs and innovative analgesic strategies. As a volume in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology™ series, the chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible protocols, and notes sections with tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls.

Comprehensive and essential, Analgesia: Methods and Protocols promises to aid and enrich the research of all those scientists and clinicians who are interested in what the increasingly molecular future has in store for analgesia research, from the molecular research bench through the animal laboratory to the bedside.

Alternatives to Mammalian Pain Models 1: Use of C. elegans for the Study of Volatile Anesthetics.- Alternatives to Mammalian Pain Models 2: Using Drosophila to Identify Novel Genes Involved in Nociception.- Animal Models of Acute Surgical Pain.- Animal Models of Acute and Chronic Inflammatory and Nociceptive Pain.- Noxious Heat Threshold Measured with Slowly Increasing Temperatures: Novel Rat Thermal Hyperalgesia Models.- Locomotor Activity in a Novel Environment as a Test of Inflammatory Pain in Rats.- Rationale and Methods for Assessment of Pain-Depressed Behavior in Preclinical Assays of Pain and Analgesia.- Animal Models of Orofacial Pain.- Migraine Models.- Experimental Models of Visceral Pain.- Human Correlates of Animal Models of Chronic Pain.- Human Experimental Pain Models 1: The Ultraviolet Light UV-B Pain Model.- Human Experimental Pain Models 2: The Cold Pressor Model.- Human Experimental Pain Models 3: Heat/Capsaicin Sensitization and Intradermal Capsaicin Models.- The Value of the Dental Impaction Pain Model in Drug Development.- Live Cell Imaging for Studying G Protein-Coupled Receptor Activation in Single Cells.- Recombinant Cell Lines Stably Expressing Functional Ion Channels.- Ion Channels in Analgesia Research.- Electrophysiological and Neurochemical Techniques to Investigate Sensory Neurons in Analgesia Research.- The Genetics of Pain and Analgesia in Laboratory Animals.- RT-PCR Analysis of Pain Genes: Use of Gel-Based RT-PCR for Studying Induced and Tissue-Enriched Gene Expression.- Gene-Based Approaches in the Study of Pathological Pain.- Linkage Analysis and Functional Evaluation of Inherited Clinical Pain Conditions.- Rat Bone Marrow Stromal Cells and Oligonucleotides in Pain Research.- Transplantation of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells in the Studyof Neuropathic Pain.- Delivery of RNA Interference to Peripheral Neurons In Vivo Using Herpes Simplex Virus.- Combination of Cell Culture Assays and Knockout Mouse Analyses for the Study of Opioid Partial Agonism.- Assessing Potential Functionality of Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Polymorphisms Associated with Pain Sensitivity and Temporomandibular Joint Disorders.- Genetic Polymorphisms and Human Sensitivity to Opioid Analgesics.- Molecular Assays for Characterization of Alternatively Spliced Isoforms of the Mu Opioid Receptor (MOR).- Inhalational Anesthetic Photolabeling.- Measuring Membrane Protein Interactions Using Optical Biosensors.- Proteomics and Metabolomics and Their Application to Analgesia Research.- Preemptive Analgesia: Problems with Assessment of Clinical Significance.- Standardization of Pain Measurements in Clinical Trials.- Procedural Sedation and Analgesia Research.- Non-invasive Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for the Study and Treatment of Neuropathic Pain.- Pain Imaging in the Emerging Era of Molecular Medicine.- Current and Emerging Pharmacologic Therapies for Pain and Challenges Which Still Lay Ahead.