Papers of the Week

Chronic abdominal pain is a common symptom of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Peripheral and central mechanisms contribute to the transition from acute to chronic pain during active disease and clinical remission. Lower mechanical threshold and hyperexcitability of visceral afferents induce gliosis in central pain circuits, leading to persistent visceral hypersensitivity (VHS). In the spinal cord, microglia, the immune sentinels of the central nervous system, undergo activation in multiple models of VHS. Here we investigated the mechanisms of microglia activation to identify centrally acting analgesics for chronic IBD pain.