Source: Joseph Donroe, MD, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
Abdominal pain is a frequent presenting concern in both the emergency department and the office setting. Acute abdominal pain is defined as pain lasting less than seven days, while an acute abdomen refers to the abrupt onset of severe abdominal pain with features suggesting a surgically intervenable process. The differential diagnosis of acute abdominal pain is broad; thus, clinicians must have a...

This protocol describes how measuring bite force and head withdrawal threshold can capture pain behavior in Complete Freund's Adjuvant (CFA)-induced inflammatory temporomandibular joint (TMJ)...

The present protocol describes the isolation of microRNAs from tick salivary glands and purified extracellular vesicles. This is a universal procedure that combines commonly used reagents and supplies. The method also allows the use of a small number of ticks, resulting in quality microRNAs that can be readily sequenced.

A method for RNA interference (RNAi) by injection of dsRNA into unfed ticks is described. RNAi is the most widely used gene-silencing technique in ticks where the use of other methods of genetic manipulation has been limited.

Approximately 3-8 million people in the United States suffer from interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS), a debilitating condition characterized in part by pelvic pain. In order to study nervous system contributions to the condition, a physiological model of urinary bladder pain is used in mice and...

Current pain scales used to quantify pain severity, such as visual analog scales, fail to capture the complexity of subjective pain experiences. Pain body diagrams are qualitative but may be more informative. The goal of this method is to extract quantitative metrics from pain body diagrams using novel pressure-hue...