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The Interplay between Chronic Pain, Opioids, and the Immune System

Chronic pain represents one of the most serious worldwide medical problems, in terms of both social and economic costs, often causing severe and intractable physical and psychological suffering. The lack of biological markers for pain, which could assist in forming clearer diagnoses and prognoses, m...

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Autores principales: Malafoglia, Valentina, Ilari, Sara, Vitiello, Laura, Tenti, Michael, Balzani, Eleonora, Muscoli, Carolina, Raffaeli, William, Bonci, Antonello
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9647319/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34269117
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10738584211030493
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author Malafoglia, Valentina
Ilari, Sara
Vitiello, Laura
Tenti, Michael
Balzani, Eleonora
Muscoli, Carolina
Raffaeli, William
Bonci, Antonello
author_facet Malafoglia, Valentina
Ilari, Sara
Vitiello, Laura
Tenti, Michael
Balzani, Eleonora
Muscoli, Carolina
Raffaeli, William
Bonci, Antonello
author_sort Malafoglia, Valentina
collection PubMed
description Chronic pain represents one of the most serious worldwide medical problems, in terms of both social and economic costs, often causing severe and intractable physical and psychological suffering. The lack of biological markers for pain, which could assist in forming clearer diagnoses and prognoses, makes chronic pain therapy particularly arduous and sometimes harmful. Opioids are used worldwide to treat chronic pain conditions, but there is still an ambiguous and inadequate understanding about their therapeutic use, mostly because of their dual effect in acutely reducing pain and inducing, at the same time, tolerance, dependence, and a risk for opioid use disorder. In addition, clinical studies suggest that opioid treatment can be associated with a high risk of immune suppression and the development of inflammatory events, worsening the chronic pain status itself. While opioid peptides and receptors are expressed in both central and peripheral nervous cells, immune cells, and tissues, the role of opioids and their receptors, when and why they are activated endogenously and what their exact role is in chronic pain pathways is still poorly understood. Thus, in this review we aim to highlight the interplay between pain and immune system, focusing on opioids and their receptors.
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spelling pubmed-96473192022-11-15 The Interplay between Chronic Pain, Opioids, and the Immune System Malafoglia, Valentina Ilari, Sara Vitiello, Laura Tenti, Michael Balzani, Eleonora Muscoli, Carolina Raffaeli, William Bonci, Antonello Neuroscientist Reviews Chronic pain represents one of the most serious worldwide medical problems, in terms of both social and economic costs, often causing severe and intractable physical and psychological suffering. The lack of biological markers for pain, which could assist in forming clearer diagnoses and prognoses, makes chronic pain therapy particularly arduous and sometimes harmful. Opioids are used worldwide to treat chronic pain conditions, but there is still an ambiguous and inadequate understanding about their therapeutic use, mostly because of their dual effect in acutely reducing pain and inducing, at the same time, tolerance, dependence, and a risk for opioid use disorder. In addition, clinical studies suggest that opioid treatment can be associated with a high risk of immune suppression and the development of inflammatory events, worsening the chronic pain status itself. While opioid peptides and receptors are expressed in both central and peripheral nervous cells, immune cells, and tissues, the role of opioids and their receptors, when and why they are activated endogenously and what their exact role is in chronic pain pathways is still poorly understood. Thus, in this review we aim to highlight the interplay between pain and immune system, focusing on opioids and their receptors. SAGE Publications 2021-07-16 2022-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9647319/ /pubmed/34269117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10738584211030493 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Reviews
Malafoglia, Valentina
Ilari, Sara
Vitiello, Laura
Tenti, Michael
Balzani, Eleonora
Muscoli, Carolina
Raffaeli, William
Bonci, Antonello
The Interplay between Chronic Pain, Opioids, and the Immune System
title The Interplay between Chronic Pain, Opioids, and the Immune System
title_full The Interplay between Chronic Pain, Opioids, and the Immune System
title_fullStr The Interplay between Chronic Pain, Opioids, and the Immune System
title_full_unstemmed The Interplay between Chronic Pain, Opioids, and the Immune System
title_short The Interplay between Chronic Pain, Opioids, and the Immune System
title_sort interplay between chronic pain, opioids, and the immune system
topic Reviews
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9647319/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34269117
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10738584211030493
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