The role of autophagy in chronic pain

Pain is the biggest factor affecting patients' daily life, and how to alleviate patients' pain and prevent it from developing into chronic pain has always been a key therapeutic goal for clinicians. There are three main causes of chronic pain, which are inflammation, nerve and tumor. And autophagy, as an important pathway to maintain homeostasis of the organism, not only affects the normal autophagy function, but also plays an important role in anti-inflammation, maintenance of nerve cell homeostasis, and inhibition of cancer occurrence and metastasis. Based on the above characteristics, we believe that autophagy has great potential in reducing and avoiding chronic pain. In this paper, after introducing chronic pain and autophagy-related genes, we delve into the pathological mechanisms of chronic pain generation, search for the relationship between autophagy and the three major causes of chronic pain, and find that autophagy may have a powerful therapeutic effect in reducing pain. We believe that autophagy can be a new target for the treatment of chronic pain.