Behavioral characterization, potential clinical relevance and mechanisms of latent pain sensitization.

Chronic pain is a debilitating disorder that can occur as painful episodes that alternates with bouts of remission and occurs despite healing of the primary insult. Those episodes are often triggered by stressful events. In the last decades, a similar situation has been evidenced in a wide variety of rodent models (including inflammatory pain, neuropathy and opioid-induced hyperalgesia) where animals develop a chronic latent hyperalgesia that silently persists after behavioral signs of pain resolution.

Dysplasia of the submucous nerve plexus in slow-transit constipation of adults.

Aim: A clinicopathological entity, intestinal neuronal dysplasia type B (IND) has been described in children with severe constipation. The present study was designed to evaluate whether IND could be identified in adult patients with idiopathic slow-transit constipation.

Methods: Rectal biopsies were taken from 27 constipated patients with documented slow colonic transit and 23 controls and stained for S100 protein, acetylcholine esterase and lactate dehydrogenase.