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Bridging The Translational Gap Between Rodent And Human Pain Research, Tayler Diane Sheahan

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The treatment of chronic pain is an immense clinical and societal burden rooted in the ineffectiveness and adverse side effects of existing analgesics. Extensive efforts have been directed towards the development of novel pain therapies with maximal efficacy and minimal unwanted effects; however, putative therapeutic targets identified in preclinical rodent models rarely translate in clinical trials. The poor translational record of basic pain research findings has been attributed, in part, to the use of suboptimal rodent pain models and behavioral endpoints used to assess putative analgesics, as well as differences in the pharmacological profiles of rodents and humans. The work …