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Updated: May 25, 2026

The Sciatic Nerve Cuffing Model of Neuropathic Pain in Mice
Published on: July 16, 2014
Metabolomics implicates altered sphingolipids in chronic pain of neuropathic origin
Gary J Patti1, Oscar Yanes, Leah P Shriver
1Department of Chemistry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Abstract:
Neuropathic pain is a debilitating condition for which the development of effective treatments has been limited by an incomplete understanding of its chemical basis. We show by using untargeted metabolomics that sphingomyelin-ceramide metabolism is altered in the dorsal horn of rats with neuropathic pain and that the upregulated, endogenous metabolite N,N-dimethylsphingosine induces mechanical hypersensitivity in vivo. These results demonstrate the utility of metabolomics to implicate unexplored biochemical pathways in disease.
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