Modulation of microglial activation states by spinal cord stimulation in an animal model of neuropathic pain: Comparing high rate, low rate, and differential target multiplexed programming

While numerous studies and patient experiences have demonstrated the efficacy of spinal cord stimulation as a treatment for chronic neuropathic pain, the exact mechanism underlying this therapy is still uncertain. Recent studies highlighting the importance of microglial cells in chronic pain and characterizing microglial activation transcriptomes have created a focus on microglia in pain research. Our group has investigated the modulation of gene expression in neurons and glial cells after spinal cord stimulation (SCS), specifically focusing on transcriptomic changes induced by varying SCS stimulation parameters. Previous work showed that, in rodents subjected to the spared nerve injury (SNI) model of neuropathic pain, a differential target multiplexed programming (DTMP) approach provided significantly better relief of pain-like behavior compared to high rate (HRP) and low rate programming (LRP). While these studies demonstrated the importance of transcriptomic changes in SCS mechanism of action, they did not specifically address the role of SCS in microglial activation. The data presented herein utilizes microglia-specific activation transcriptomes to further understand how an SNI model of chronic pain and subsequent continuous SCS treatment with either DTMP, HRP, or LRP affects microglial activation. Genes for each activation transcriptome were identified within our dataset and gene expression levels were compared with that of healthy animals, naïve to injury and interventional procedures. Pearson correlations indicated that DTMP yields the highest significant correlations to expression levels found in the healthy animals across all microglial activation transcriptomes. In contrast, HRP or LRP yielded weak or very weak correlations for these transcriptomes. This work demonstrates that chronic pain and subsequent SCS treatments can modulate microglial activation transcriptomes, supporting previous research on microglia in chronic pain. Furthermore, this study provides evidence that DTMP is more effective than HRP and LRP at modulating microglial transcriptomes, offering potential insight into the therapeutic efficacy of DTMP.