Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jan-Dec:17:1744806921999013.
doi: 10.1177/1744806921999013.

Modulation of microglial activation states by spinal cord stimulation in an animal model of neuropathic pain: Comparing high rate, low rate, and differential target multiplexed programming

Affiliations

Modulation of microglial activation states by spinal cord stimulation in an animal model of neuropathic pain: Comparing high rate, low rate, and differential target multiplexed programming

William J Smith et al. Mol Pain. 2021 Jan-Dec.

Abstract

While numerous studies and patient experiences have demonstrated the efficacy of spinal cord stimulation as a treatment for chronic neuropathic pain, the exact mechanism underlying this therapy is still uncertain. Recent studies highlighting the importance of microglial cells in chronic pain and characterizing microglial activation transcriptomes have created a focus on microglia in pain research. Our group has investigated the modulation of gene expression in neurons and glial cells after spinal cord stimulation (SCS), specifically focusing on transcriptomic changes induced by varying SCS stimulation parameters. Previous work showed that, in rodents subjected to the spared nerve injury (SNI) model of neuropathic pain, a differential target multiplexed programming (DTMP) approach provided significantly better relief of pain-like behavior compared to high rate (HRP) and low rate programming (LRP). While these studies demonstrated the importance of transcriptomic changes in SCS mechanism of action, they did not specifically address the role of SCS in microglial activation. The data presented herein utilizes microglia-specific activation transcriptomes to further understand how an SNI model of chronic pain and subsequent continuous SCS treatment with either DTMP, HRP, or LRP affects microglial activation. Genes for each activation transcriptome were identified within our dataset and gene expression levels were compared with that of healthy animals, naïve to injury and interventional procedures. Pearson correlations indicated that DTMP yields the highest significant correlations to expression levels found in the healthy animals across all microglial activation transcriptomes. In contrast, HRP or LRP yielded weak or very weak correlations for these transcriptomes. This work demonstrates that chronic pain and subsequent SCS treatments can modulate microglial activation transcriptomes, supporting previous research on microglia in chronic pain. Furthermore, this study provides evidence that DTMP is more effective than HRP and LRP at modulating microglial transcriptomes, offering potential insight into the therapeutic efficacy of DTMP.

Keywords: chronic neuropathic pain; differential target multiplexed (DTM) programming; microglia transcriptome; spinal cord stimulation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interests: DLC and RV are co-inventors of patents related to SCS using differential target multiplexed programming. They are consultants for SGX Medical LLC and Medtronic Inc. CAK is a consultant for SGX Medical LLC. WJS has no conflict of interest to declare. FV has no conflict of interest to declare. SMT has no conflict of interest to declare.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Differential gene expression heat maps for each microglia transcriptome of each SCS treatment relative to the pain model (No-SCS) compared to naive (healthy state) relative to the pain model (No-SCS).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Heat maps of differential expression patterns for selected pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory microglia markers. Only those that were changed by the pain model by more than 15% relative to naïve were included.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Colloca L, Ludman T, Bouhassira D, et al.. Neuropathic pain. Nat Rev Dis Prim 2017; 3: 17002. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ruiz-Sauri A, Orduña-Valls JM, Blasco-Serra A, et al.. Glia to neuron ratio in the posterior aspect of the human spinal cord at thoracic segments relevant to spinal cord stimulation. J Anat 2019; 235: 997–1006. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bahney J, von Bartheld CS. The cellular composition and glia–neuron ratio in the spinal cord of a human and a nonhuman primate: comparison with other species and brain regions. Anat Rec 2018; 301: 697–710. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Burish MJ, Peebles JK, Baldwin MK, Tavares L, Kaas JH. and Herculano-Houzel S. Cellular scaling rules for primate spinal cords. Brain Behav Evol 2010; 76: 45–59. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ji R-R, Berta T, Nedergaard M. Glia and pain: is chronic pain a gliopathy? Pain 2013; 154: S10–28. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources