Publications by authors named "Betsy Schulman"

Background And Objectives: Despite extensive efforts, the mechanisms underlying pain after axonal injury remain incompletely understood. Pain following corneal refractive surgery offers a valuable human model for investigating trigeminal axonal injury because laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) severs axons of trigeminal ganglion neurons innervating the cornea. While the majority of patients are pain-free shortly after surgery, a minority endure persistent postoperative ocular pain.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study investigates how voltage-gated sodium channels Nav1.7 and Nav1.8 work together in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons, particularly focusing on the impact of a mutation in Nav1.7 associated with neuropathic pain known as inherited erythromelalgia (IEM).
  • Researchers found that Nav1.8 significantly increases the likelihood of action potential (AP) generation near the voltage threshold, outperforming Nav1.7 in terms of channel open-probability at -21.9 mV by nine times.
  • Reducing Nav1.8 current by 25-50% can decrease the excitability of DRG neurons with the Nav1.7
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Despite extensive study, the mechanisms underlying pain after axonal injury remain incompletely understood. Pain after corneal refractive surgery provides a model, in humans, of the effect of injury to trigeminal afferent nerves. Axons of trigeminal ganglion neurons that innervate the cornea are transected by laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (LASIK).

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There is a pressing need for understanding of factors that confer resilience to pain. Gain-of-function mutations in sodium channel Nav1.7 produce hyperexcitability of dorsal root ganglion neurons underlying inherited erythromelalgia, a human genetic model of neuropathic pain.

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Article Synopsis
  • Refractive surgery, such as LASIK and PRK, can lead to persistent pain in some patients, suspected to be neuropathic in nature, prompting a study on the genetic factors involved.
  • The study included 21 patients, analyzing their genomes to identify genetic variations associated with chronic pain following the surgeries.
  • Results showed low-frequency genetic variants in specific ion channels and collagen genes, with one gene identified as statistically significant, suggesting further research is needed to clarify the genetic underpinnings of corneal neuralgia.
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Voltage-gated sodium channel Nav1.9 is a threshold channel that regulates action potential firing. Nav1.

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Pain is a complex process that involves both detection in the peripheral nervous system and perception in the CNS. Individual-to-individual differences in pain are well documented, but not well understood. Here we capitalized on inherited erythromelalgia (IEM), a well characterized human genetic model of chronic pain, and studied a unique family containing related IEM subjects with the same disease-causing Na1.

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Voltage-gated sodium channel Na1.7 is a threshold channel in peripheral dorsal root ganglion (DRG), trigeminal ganglion, and sympathetic ganglion neurons. Gain-of-function mutations in Na1.

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Inherited erythromelalgia (IEM) is a chronic pain disorder caused by gain-of-function mutations of peripheral sodium channel Nav1.7, in which warmth triggers severe pain. Little is known about the brain representation of pain in IEM.

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Importance: There is a need for more effective pharmacotherapy for chronic pain, including pain in inherited erythromelalgia (IEM) in which gain-of-function mutations of sodium channel NaV1.7 make dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons hyperexcitable.

Objective: To determine whether pain in IEM can be attenuated via pharmacotherapy guided by genomic analysis and functional profiling.

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Inherited erythromelalgia, the first human pain syndrome linked to voltage-gated sodium channels, is widely regarded as a genetic model of human pain. Because inherited erythromelalgia was linked to gain-of-function changes of sodium channel Na(v)1.7 only a decade ago, the literature has mainly consisted of reports of genetic and/or clinical characterization of individual patients.

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In C. elegans, heterochronic genes control the timing of cell fate determination during development. Two heterochronic genes, let-7 and lin-4, encode microRNAs (miRNAs) that down-regulate a third heterochronic gene lin-41 by binding to complementary sites in its 3'UTR.

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