Nerve-myeloid cell interactions in persistent human pain: a reappraisal using updated cell subset classifications.

The past 20 years have seen a dramatic shift in our understanding of the role of the immune system in initiating and maintaining pain. Myeloid cells, including macrophages, dendritic cells, Langerhans cells, and mast cells, are increasingly implicated in bidirectional interactions with nerve fibres in rodent pain models. However, our understanding of the human setting is still poor.

Machine learning analysis of the UK Biobank reveals prognostic and diagnostic immune biomarkers for polyneuropathy and neuropathic pain in diabetes.

Aims: We assessed the health data of 11,047 people with diabetes in the UK Biobank to rank 329 risk factors for diabetic polyneuropathy (DPN) and DPN with chronic neuropathic pain without a priori assumption.

Methods: The Integrated Disease Explanation and Risk Scoring (IDEARS) platform applies machine learning algorithms to multimodal data to determine individual disease risk, and rank risk factor importance using mean SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) score.

Results: IDEARS models showed discriminative performances with AUC > 0.

A dual role of microbiota type 17 immunity in tissue repair and pain.

In this commentary, we discuss the findings of Enamorado et al. who have, for the first time, demonstrated that immunity to the microbiota enhances repair of cutaneous sensory nerves and epithelial tissues following skin injury. Commensal-specific IL-17 producing CD4 T helper cells have direct contact with injured sensory neurons, inducing multiple epithelial and neuronal repair genes.