Abstract

Recent investigations of pain mechanisms leading to the induction and maintenance of long-term potentiation (LTP) in the spinal cord have identified a huge number of molecular targets that might be appropriate for therapeutically intervention. In this short review we summarize recently published studies investigating drugs that affect LTP in the spinal cord. After providing an overview of spinal pain pathways and of the respective methods for their investigation, molecular targets for possible pharmacological interventions are discussed.

Keywords: spinal, central nervous system, CNS, long term potentiation, LTP, pain, analgesia, molecular targets, drugs, pharmacology, review