Section Review: Central & Peripheral Nervous Systems: Novel approaches for analgesic drug assessment: new animal paradigms

Abstract

The discovery of novel therapeutics for the treatment of chronic pain depends largely upon the development of clinically-relevant animal models and quantitative methods for evaluation of drug efficacy. This paper describes our use of the place preference paradigm and the operant response paradigm to provide unique and clinically-relevant measures of analgesic drug effects against chronic inflammatory pain in rats. The data presented demonstrate that the place preference paradigm can assess the affective properties of analgesic drugs under conditions of chronic pain, and that the operant response paradigm can quantify both the functional motor deficits that accompany chronic inflammatory pain and the recovery of function afforded by analgesic drugs. These data suggest that both place preference and operant response paradigms may serve as useful assays for evaluating unique and clinically-relevant aspects of analgesic drug effects in animal models of chronic inflammatory pain.