Preoperative housing in an enriched environment significantly reduces the duration of post-operative pain in a rat model of knee inflammation.

The influence of the environment on clinical post-operative pain received recently more attention in human. A very common paradigm in experimental pain research to model the effect of housing conditions is the enriched environment (EE). During EE-housing, rats are housed in a large cage (i.

Enriched environment and the recovery from inflammatory pain: Social versus physical aspects and their interaction.

In this study, we aimed at comparing the effect of the social versus the physical enrichment of the environment on inflammatory pain. Hence, a rat model of carrageenan-induced knee inflammation was used. Four housing conditions were investigated: a physically enriched environment (PE), a socially enriched environment (SE), an enriched environment (EE) (i.

Environmental housing affects the duration of mechanical allodynia and the spinal astroglial activation in a rat model of chronic inflammatory pain.

In this study, we aimed at investigating the effect of an enriched environment (EE) on the recovery from chronic inflammatory pain. Inflammatory pain was induced by the injection of 2 mg of carrageenan (CAR) into the right knee of male Sprague-Dawley rats (n=34). Rats were housed either singly (S-housed) or in an EE (EE-housed).

The CatWalk method: assessment of mechanical allodynia in experimental chronic pain.

The CatWalk gait analysis system has recently been suggested as a rapid and objective alternative method over the von Frey test to assess mechanical allodynia in chronic neuropathic pain models. Our results demonstrate that no correlation exists between the development of mechanical allodynia and changes in CatWalk-gait parameters in a chronic inflammatory pain model. Hence, the use of the CatWalk in assessment of experimental chronic pain is discussed.