This article about NMDA might interest Michael...

http://www.painonline.com/mt-archive...it_togeth.html


Changes in CSF Cytokine levels in RSD http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl.../alexander.pdf


Anne Louise Oaklander http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/...6/01-pain.html

Oaklander,... assistant professor of anesthesiology and neurology at Harvard Medical School, removed pinhead-size skin samples that allowed her to count how many nerves are working in small areas of skin. She found dramatic, long-lasting loss of nerve endings in areas previously affected by shingles. That was expected. But when her team checked skin from unaffected areas directly opposite the shingles outbreak, they were startled to see half the nerve endings had been lost there as well.

What is more, the greater the loss of nerves on the unaffected side, the more pain patients felt on the side previously affected with shingles. Oaklander also has observed this crossover effect in patients with problems other than shingles. "You see it in all kinds of injuries - cut fingers, sprained ankles, broken legs," she notes. "We intend to investigate this ...crossover pain is like phantom pain, the stabbing, burning sensation people feel in limbs that are no longer there because of amputation"

Why wasn't crossover damage found before? "Because scientists and doctors never looked for it," Oaklander answers. "It doesn't fit in with our current understanding of how the body works. You don't see it because you don't look for it."

While her research was done in lab rats, Oaklander says it's already benefiting pain patients simply by proving their pain is not just in their heads. "We really showed hardcore anatomical data, with facts and numbers, to prove this is a real phenomenon," she says. Oaklander's research was published in the journal Annals of Neurology, May, 2004 and was funded by the N.I.H.(National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke)