50 It thus seems that the dysfunctional modulation state can be instrumental in the choice of drug for pain alleviation. This is a step forward toward individualized pain medicine. A further question pertaining to pain modulation is whether it is flexible, or unchanged throughout

life. A study on osteoarthritis patients undergoing hip replacement surgery showed an improvement in CPM, along with pain alleviation.36 It is noted that this was obtained for only one of several CPM protocols used in that study, a finding Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical that highlights the need for additional studies on the interrelations between various testing protocols of pain modulation that yield varying Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical results. Similar results were reported for patients undergoing knee replacement surgery.39 These post-surgical results, together with our post-medication results reported above on diabetic neuropathy, suggest that pain modulation is a dynamic feature that probably tends to become Apoptosis inhibitor pro-nociceptive during pain and to shift back upon alleviation Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of the pain. Obviously, a pain modulation profile depends on many factors: 1) genetic factors, 2) environmentally

influenced psychosocial factors, 3) the specifications of the pathology generating clinical pain, and 4) the pharmacological agents used to prevent or treat pain. Studies in recent years are trying to integrate psychophysical as well as genetic, neurophysiological, imaging, and other factors in exploring the pain phenomenon. A few recent Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical examples follow: healthy subjects with low Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical expression of serotonin transporter gene demonstrated less efficient CPM effect on pressure pain threshold and noxious

heat.51,52 In the neurophysiology domain, a pain-evoked potentials-based source localization study showed reduced prefrontal cortical activity that was associated with altered pain inhibitory modulation in migraine patients.53 A recent neuroimaging study characterized the CPM response however as associated with reduced hemodynamic responses in classical pain-responsive areas; furthermore, the CPM efficiency was associated with strength of functional connectivity between various structures on brain endogenous analgesia system.54 Finally, there is an important integrative study by Loggia et al. who showed a “triple interaction” between the pain psychophysics, the activation in pain modulatory structures as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging technique, and the genetics of catecholamine turnover.