Referred Visceral Hyperalgesia: From Sensations to Molecular Mechanisms

摘要

Visceral pain is the most common form of pain produced by disease. Some forms of visceral pain, such as dysmenorrhea, labor pain, and the pain of urinary and biliary cystitis, are extremely common. Yet the mechanisms of visceral pain have not received the same degree of attention as somatic or neuropathic pain, both less frequent forms of clinically relevant pain. Although some of the neurobiological mechanisms of visceral pain are common to other forms of pain, others are not, and therefore it is not always possible to extrapolate to the visceral domain the data obtained in studies of somatic or neuropathic pain.