Advisory Committee Chair
Tapan S Mehta
Advisory Committee Members
Amie B McLain
Jeremy N Marchant-Forde
Robert E Sorge
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
2017
Degree Name by School
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) School of Health Professions
Abstract
The majority of people suffering from neuropathic pain as a result of a spinal cord injury (SCI) do not experience effective pain relief with currently available therapeutics. One aspect of preclinical studies that may be limiting the development of successful analgesics is the assessment of pain in animal models of SCI. Previous work has relied primarily on withdrawal reflexes to indicate pain; however, there is evidence that suggests this is an inadequate measure of pain sensation as spinal reflexes do not reflect the supraspinal processing of nociceptive information. The use of withdrawal responses is especially challenging in the context of SCI, when ascending pathways of the spinothalamic tract are likely damaged and hyperactive stretch reflexes may confound results. Therefore, the goal of this dissertation work was to develop standardized methods to measure supraspinal pain in animal models of SCI and reexamine the role of withdrawal reflexes in pain sensation. We first used the Rat Grimace Scale (RGS) to assess evoked and spontaneous pain after cervical SCI. Next, we characterized the vocal repertoire of adult domestic pigs in a biomedical research laboratory to provide a foundation for pain-related vocal analysis in our porcine model of SCI. Finally, we developed the Pig Evoked Pain Scale (PEPS), a numerical rating scale that assesses behavioral responses to evoked stimuli ranging from withdrawal reflexes to escape behavior. We found that the RGS and PEPS were reliable in our models of SCI and that withdrawal responses were typically accompanied by behavioral indicators of supraspinal pain. We also classified 16 call types in the vocal repertoire of pigs, and incorporated these results into the development of the PEPS scale. These results provide standardized methods to assess supraspinal pain in small and large animal models of SCI that will improve the translation of results from the laboratory into the clinical setting.
Recommended Citation
Henley, Kathryn Yamamoto, "Behavioral markers of supraspinal pain in clinically relevant models of spinal cord injury" (2017). All ETDs from UAB. 1916.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/1916