LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Pentameric Ligand-Gated Ion Channels as Pharmacological Targets Against Chronic Pain

Photo from wikipedia

Chronic pain is a common detrimental condition that affects around 20% of the world population. The current drugs to treat chronic pain states, especially neuropathic pain, have a limited clinical… Click to show full abstract

Chronic pain is a common detrimental condition that affects around 20% of the world population. The current drugs to treat chronic pain states, especially neuropathic pain, have a limited clinical efficiency and present significant adverse effects that complicates their regular use. Recent studies have proposed new therapeutic strategies focused on the pharmacological modulation of G-protein-coupled receptors, transporters, enzymes, and ion channels expressed on the nociceptive pathways. The present work intends to summarize recent advances on the pharmacological modulation of pentameric ligand-gated ion channels, which plays a key role in pain processing. Experimental data have shown that novel allosteric modulators targeting the excitatory nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, as well as the inhibitory GABAA and glycine receptors, reverse chronic pain-related behaviors in preclinical assays. Collectively, these evidences strongly suggest the pharmacological modulation of pentameric ligand-gated ion channels is a promising strategy towards the development of novel therapeutics to treat chronic pain states in humans.

Keywords: ion channels; pentameric ligand; ligand gated; chronic pain; pain

Journal Title: Frontiers in Pharmacology
Year Published: 2020

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.