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Ethanol Antiallodynia and Reward Seeking in Mice with Spared Nerve Injury
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Ethanol Antiallodynia and Reward Seeking in Mice with Spared Nerve Injury

Mitch Nothem and Jacqueline M. Barker
The journal of pain, v 23(5), pp 61-61
May 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2022.03.229
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2022.03.229View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Open Access (Publisher-Specific),  Open

Abstract

Clinical data suggests that both men and women with chronic pain are more likely to develop alcohol use disorder, to relapse after a period of abstinence, and to report using alcohol to manage chronic pain. These data led to the hypothesis that alcohol-related behaviors are different in those experiencing chronic pain. To test this hypothesis, the analgesic effect of multiple doses of ethanol (0.5, 1, 2 g/kg i.p.) on male and female mice with spared nerve injury (SNI) was investigated using Von Frey and dynamic weight bearing assays. A conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm was then used to model ethanol seeking after nerve injury. Findings indicate that SNI reduced mechanical thresholds, increased weight bearing on the contralateral hindpaw, and decreased paw print area on the ipsilateral hindpaw. In male SNI mice, all three doses of ethanol fully reversed mechanical hypersensitivity, while in female mice only the highest dose (2.0 g/kg) was fully antiallodynic. Additionally, the highest dose was analgesic in Sham animals in both male and female mice. In the CPP experiments, conditioning with 0.5 g/kg ethanol induced a modest CPP for the ethanol-paired chamber in SNI and Sham male mice. Further, following extinction, painful stimulation reinstated ethanol-seeking behavior only in SNI mice. These data suggest that the analgesic effects of alcohol are distinct in male and female mice and that animals in chronic pain may be more sensitive to stress-induced reinstatement when pain is the stressor. Ongoing work is focused on characterizing ethanol CPP in female mice and investigating neural correlates of ethanol analgesia and reward in mice in chronic pain.

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Web of Science research areas
Clinical Neurology
Neurosciences
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