Experimental Pain Induction

Lifetree Clinical Research® is in the forefront of leveraging experimental pain models in healthy volunteers to demonstrate efficacy early in the drug development process. The cold pressor, a model of acute pain, is robustly sensitive to the analgesic activity of opiates (Koltzenburg et al., 2006; Escher et al., 2007) whereas contradicting results are observed with NSAIDs (Jones et al., 1988; Compton et al., 2003). A combination of heat plus capsaicin, induces a type of cutaneous sensitization that models neuropathic pain conditions such as post-herpetic neuralgia and diabetic peripheral neuropathy (Dirks et al., 2003). Heat/capsaicin-induced hyperalgesia and allodynia are sensitive to opioids, local anesthetics, and antiepileptic drugs such as gabapentin and pregabalin (Dirks et al., 2000; Petersen et al., 2001; Dirks et al., 2002; Gottrup et al., 2004; Wang et al., 2008). Quantitative sensory testing (QST) is carried out utilizing a Neurometer® which allows Lifetree physicians and staff to explore different pain modalities transmitted by distinct populations of nerve fibers (Sakai et al., 2006).