Uncategorized

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most frequent inherited disorder in the world. It is the consequence of a single amino acid mutation on beta-globin chain, leading to red blood cells deformation, haemolysis and chronic inflammation. Clinical consequences are vaso-occlusives crisis, acute chest syndrome, thrombosis, infection and chronic endothelial lesions.

Chronic pain involves both central and peripheral neuronal plasticity that encompasses changes in the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nociceptors. Within the forebrain, mesocorticolimbic regions associated with emotional regulation have recently been shown to exhibit lasting gene expression changes in models of chronic pain. To better understand how such enduring transcriptional changes might be regulated within brain structures associated with processing of pain or affect, we examined epigenetic modifications involved with active or permissive transcriptional states (histone H3 lysine 4 mono and trimethylation, and histone H3 lysine 27 acetylation) in periaqueductal gray (PAG), lateral hypothalamus (LH), nucleus accumbens (NAc), and ventral tegmental area (VTA) 5 weeks after sciatic nerve injury in mice to model chronic pain. For both male and female mice in chronic pain, we observed an overall trend for a reduction of these epigenetic markers in periaqueductal gray, LH, and NAc, but not VTA. Moreover, we discovered that some epigenetic modifications exhibited changes associated with pain history, while others were associated with individual differences in pain sensitivity. When taken together, these results suggest that nerve injury leads to chronic chromatin-mediated suppression of transcription in key limbic brain structures and circuits, which may underlie enduring changes in pain processing and sensitivity within these systems.

Effective pain control is crucial to postoperative recovery and is affected by biopsychosocial factors. This study aimed to evaluate how non-English primary language, gender, and marital status may influence pain, length of stay, and mortality after general surgery.

To characterize the clinical features of long COVID, 286 patients who received care in our outpatient clinic for long COVID from May 2021 through December 2021 were surveyed. The recovery periods of each symptom and the key factors contributing to early recovery were statistically analysed. The median age of the patients was 35.8 years, with 137 men and 149 women. The median number of symptoms was 2.8. The most frequent symptoms were respiratory manifestations (52.1%), followed by fatigue (51.4%). Respiratory symptoms, fatigue and headache/arthralgia were major complaints in the initial phase, whereas hair loss was a major complaint in the late phase, suggesting that the chief complaint of patients with long COVID may vary temporally. The best treatment outcome was observed for pulmonary symptoms, and hair loss had the worst outcome. COVID-19 severity, the number of manifestations and delay in starting treatment exerted a negative effect on the recovery period of long COVID. In addition, a smoking habit was an independent risk factor for slowing the recovery period from long COVID. This study provides insights into the clinical course of each manifestation and therapeutic options with a more certain future of long COVID to meet the unmet medical needs. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Systematic Review.

Catecholamine secreting tumors are a rare type of neuroendocrine tumors whose embryological origin is neural crest cells. 80 % to 90 % arise from the chromaffin cells of adrenal medulla while 10 % to 20 % arise from sympathetic and parasympathetic ganglia. Paragangliomas can be symptomatic due to excess catecholamine secretion or can be asymptomatic. Definitive treatment of paragangliomas is surgical resection.

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a disease with a heavy functional, psychological and socioeconomic impact. The management of Quality of Life (QoL) as a therapeutic objective is a fairly recent notion, especially in Tunisia. We aimed to evaluate QoL in RA patients and to identify its affecting factors.

To characterize the geographic distribution of United States (US) headache subspecialists in 2021 compared to 2012 and analyze trends in distribution of and growth by geography.

Cav3.2 T-type calcium channel is a major molecular actor of neuropathic pain in peripheral sensory neurons, but its involvement at the supra-spinal level is almost unknown. In the Anterior Pretectum (APT), a hub of connectivity of the somatosensory system involved in pain perception, we show that Cav3.2 channels are expressed in a sub-population of GABAergic neurons co-expressing parvalbumin (PV). In these PV-expressing neurons, Cav3.2 channels contribute to a high frequency bursting activity, which is increased in the spared nerve injury model of neuropathy. Specific deletion of Cav3.2 channels in APT neurons reduced both the initiation and maintenance of mechanical and cold allodynia. These data are a direct demonstration that centrally expressed Cav3.2 channels also play a fundamental role in pain pathophysiology.

Endometriosis is an estrogen-dependent chronic progressive gynecological disease that affects around 10% of women of reproductive age. A recent study shows that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has the potential as a clinical marker in the diagnosis of endometriosis. We aimed to determine whether BDNF levels are correlated with pain scores associated with endometriosis.