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How should we define a nociceptor in the gut-brain axis?

In the past few years, there has been extraordinary interest in how the gut communicates with the brain. This is because substantial and gathering data has emerged to suggest that sensory nerve pathways between the gut and brain may contribute much more widely in heath and disease, than was original...

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Autores principales: Spencer, Nick J., Hibberd, Tim, Xie, Zili, Hu, Hongzhen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9806170/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36601592
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.1096405
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author Spencer, Nick J.
Hibberd, Tim
Xie, Zili
Hu, Hongzhen
author_facet Spencer, Nick J.
Hibberd, Tim
Xie, Zili
Hu, Hongzhen
author_sort Spencer, Nick J.
collection PubMed
description In the past few years, there has been extraordinary interest in how the gut communicates with the brain. This is because substantial and gathering data has emerged to suggest that sensory nerve pathways between the gut and brain may contribute much more widely in heath and disease, than was originally presumed. In the skin, the different types of sensory nerve endings have been thoroughly characterized, including the morphology of different nerve endings and the sensory modalities they encode. This knowledge is lacking for most types of visceral afferents, particularly spinal afferents that innervate abdominal organs, like the gut. In fact, only recently have the nerve endings of spinal afferents in any visceral organ been identified. What is clear is that spinal afferents play the major role in pain perception from the gut to the brain. Perhaps surprisingly, the majority of spinal afferent nerve endings in the gut express the ion channel TRPV1, which is often considered to be a marker of “nociceptive” neurons. And, a majority of gut-projecting spinal afferent neurons expressing TRPV1 are activated at low thresholds, in the “normal” physiological range, well below the normal threshold for detection of painful sensations. This introduces a major conundrum regarding visceral nociception. How should we define a “nociceptor” in the gut? We discuss the notion that nociception from the gut wall maybe a process encrypted into multiple different morphological types of spinal afferent nerve ending, rather than a single class of sensory ending, like free-endings, suggested to underlie nociception in skin.
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spelling pubmed-98061702023-01-03 How should we define a nociceptor in the gut-brain axis? Spencer, Nick J. Hibberd, Tim Xie, Zili Hu, Hongzhen Front Neurosci Neuroscience In the past few years, there has been extraordinary interest in how the gut communicates with the brain. This is because substantial and gathering data has emerged to suggest that sensory nerve pathways between the gut and brain may contribute much more widely in heath and disease, than was originally presumed. In the skin, the different types of sensory nerve endings have been thoroughly characterized, including the morphology of different nerve endings and the sensory modalities they encode. This knowledge is lacking for most types of visceral afferents, particularly spinal afferents that innervate abdominal organs, like the gut. In fact, only recently have the nerve endings of spinal afferents in any visceral organ been identified. What is clear is that spinal afferents play the major role in pain perception from the gut to the brain. Perhaps surprisingly, the majority of spinal afferent nerve endings in the gut express the ion channel TRPV1, which is often considered to be a marker of “nociceptive” neurons. And, a majority of gut-projecting spinal afferent neurons expressing TRPV1 are activated at low thresholds, in the “normal” physiological range, well below the normal threshold for detection of painful sensations. This introduces a major conundrum regarding visceral nociception. How should we define a “nociceptor” in the gut? We discuss the notion that nociception from the gut wall maybe a process encrypted into multiple different morphological types of spinal afferent nerve ending, rather than a single class of sensory ending, like free-endings, suggested to underlie nociception in skin. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-12-19 /pmc/articles/PMC9806170/ /pubmed/36601592 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.1096405 Text en Copyright © 2022 Spencer, Hibberd, Xie and Hu. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Spencer, Nick J.
Hibberd, Tim
Xie, Zili
Hu, Hongzhen
How should we define a nociceptor in the gut-brain axis?
title How should we define a nociceptor in the gut-brain axis?
title_full How should we define a nociceptor in the gut-brain axis?
title_fullStr How should we define a nociceptor in the gut-brain axis?
title_full_unstemmed How should we define a nociceptor in the gut-brain axis?
title_short How should we define a nociceptor in the gut-brain axis?
title_sort how should we define a nociceptor in the gut-brain axis?
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9806170/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36601592
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.1096405
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