An Autoimmune Basis for Chronic Pain?
 

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Antibodies For Neuropathic Pain
Today's post comes from painresearchfoorum.org (see link below) and discusses in some detail, one of the stories currently appearing across the 'neuropathy net' and that is the use of intravenous immunoglobulin and other antibodies to control neurological pain. The article is both long and scientific in nature and may make tricky reading but we need to know about any new developments in the search for an effective neuropathy treatment for all and is thus worth a read (or at least a 'skim')



An Autoimmune Basis for Chronic Pain?
Antibodies to potassium channel complex implicated in pain
by Megan Talkington on 4 Sep 2012

In people, autoantibodies to neuronal voltage-gated potassium channel (VGKC) complexes are associated with diverse neurologic disturbances, including seizures, encephalitis, and muscle cramps and twitching. The symptoms, many of which are attributed to antibody-induced neuronal hyperexcitability, often respond to immunotherapy. Now, researchers led by Christopher Klein at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, US, have shown that the autoantibodies frequently associate with another condition: pain. In a paper published August 15 in Neurology, Klein and colleagues report pain, often chronic, in half of a group of 316 patients with VGKC-complex autoreactive antibodies. Patients with pain showed signs of hyperexcitability in sensory pathways, and, among the few who received immunotherapy, pain improved for most.

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