Gauchan et al., 2009a, Gauchan et al., 2009b and Gauchan et al., 2009c showed that blocking TRPM8 function by administering capsazepine inhibits oxaliplatin-induced cold allodynia. Langerhans cells (LC) are skin’s resident immune cells and studies have shown an increase in its number in patients with CRPS-I and inflammatory immune diseases.

Siau et al. (2006) have demonstrated an increase in LC cells in skin in vincristine and paclitaxel evoked Adriamycin research buy painful neuropathy and linked the development of pain manifestation with increased LC cells. There are different mechanisms by which LC cells may contribute to pain development including release of NO (Qureshi et al., 1996), pro-inflammatory cytokines (Deng et al., 2003) and neurotrophic factors (Torii et al., 1997) that causes sensitization of remnant nociceptors leading to spontaneous discharge and mechano-hypersensitivity. Ledeboer et al. (2007) demonstrated that paclitaxel treatment-induced neuropathic pain is associated with induction of TNF-alpha and IL-1beta in the lumbar DRG. Furthermore in the same study,

administration of intrathecal IL-10 genes attenuated paclitaxel induced up-regulated pro-inflammatory cytokines along with decrease in mRNA expression of CD11b, a macrophage/dendritic cell marker, in the lumbar DRG. It suggests that macrophages (resident CD11b+ immune cells) are the potential sources of these pro-inflammatory cytokines that in-turn sensitize primary sensory afferents and modify sensory input to the spinal dorsal horn to facilitate pain. An important role of inflammatory mediators is described in our studies using vincristine-induced neuropathic model selleck inhibitor (Kaur et al., 2010 and Muthuraman and Singh, SPTLC1 2011). The experimental studies have shown that glial cell inhibitors such

as propentofylline, thalidomide and minocycline (selective for microglia) attenuate paclitaxel/vincristine induced neuropathic pain (Cata et al., 2006 and Sweitzer et al., 2006), supporting a role for activated (micro)glial cells in these conditions. It has been reported that macrophage accumulation and activation in the DRG of paclitaxel-treated rats contribute to generation and development of the neuropathy. Nishida and co-workers demonstrated an up-regulation of matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3, stromelysin-1) and CD163, a macrophage marker in the DRG. MMP-3 up-regulation occurs prior to macrophage accumulation suggesting that the up-regulation of MMP-3 followed by macrophage activation in the DRG may be a significant event to trigger a series of reactions developing paclitaxel-induced peripheral neuropathic pain (Nishida et al., 2008). A recent study has shown an increase in IL-6 which is correlated with appearance of bortezomib-induced neuropathic pain (Mangiacavalli et al., 2010). The studies have suggested the critical role of arachidonic acid derived mediators including prostaglandins i.e.