Sodium channels as a new target for pain treatment
Abstract
Voltage-gated sodium channels, especially the Nav1.7, Nav1.8, and Nav1.9 subtypes, play a crucial role in the transmission of pain signals. Nav1.7 is considered a threshold channel that regulates the generation of action potentials and is closely associated with various hereditary pain disorders. Nav1.8 primarily participates in inflammatory and neuropathic pain within the peripheral nervous system. Its characteristic of not involving the central nervous system makes it a potential target for non-addictive analgesics. Nav1.9 has shown significant involvement in cold pain sensing and small fiber neuropathy, although its mechanism of action is still under further investigation. Currently, despite promising results from preclinical studies, sodium channel inhibitors have not fully met expectations in clinical trials due to issues such as drug selectivity, dosing, and safety. The development of Nav1.7 and Nav1.8 inhibitors faces challenges such as drug intolerance, insufficient target occupancy, and off-target side effects. Future research may promote the development of non-opioid analgesics through combined inhibition strategies targeting multiple Nav subtypes, as well as improving drug selectivity and bioavailability. Overall, sodium channel inhibitors remain a key area of research in pain management, but their clinical application prospects still require further exploration.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Noninvasive and Point-of-Care Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS)-Based Breathalyzer for Mass Screening of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) under 5 min
- De Novo Transcriptome Analysis and Detection of Antimicrobial Peptides of the American Cockroach Periplaneta americana (Linnaeus)
- Molecular Characterization and Expression Profiling of Tomato GRF Transcription Factor Family Genes in Response to Abiotic Stresses and Phytohormones
- Assembly of Tight Junction Strands: Claudin-10b and Claudin-3 Form Homo Tetrameric Building Blocks that Polymerise in a Channel-Independent Manner
- Update of the Pompe variant database for the prediction of clinical phenotypes: Novel disease‐associated variants, common sequence variants, and results from newborn screening
- Machine Learning-Based SERS Chemical Space for Two-Way Prediction of Structures and Spectra of Untrained Molecules
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.