Peripheral nerve injury can trigger neuropathic pain in adults but not in infants; indeed, for unknown reasons, neuropathic pain is rare before adolescence. We show here that the absence of neuropathic pain response in infant male rats and mice following nerve injury is due to an active, constitutive immune suppression of dorsal horn pain activity. In contrast to adult nerve injury, which triggers a proinflammatory immune response in the spinal dorsal horn, infant nerve injury triggers an anti-inflammatory immune response, characterized by significant increases in IL-4 and IL-10. This immediate anti-inflammatory response can also be evoked by direct C-fiber nerve stimulation in infant, but not adult, mice. Blockade of the anti-inflammatory activity with intrathecal anti-IL10 unmasks neuropathic pain behavior in infant nerve injured mice, showing that pain hypersensitivity in young mice is actively suppressed by a dominant anti-inflammatory neuroimmune response. As infant nerve injured mice reach adolescence (postnatal day 25-30), the dorsal horn immune profile switches from an anti-inflammatory to a proinflammatory response characterized by significant increases in TNF and BDNF, and this is accompanied by a late onset neuropathic pain behavior and increased dorsal horn cell sensitivity to cutaneous mechanical and cold stimuli. These findings show that neuropathic pain following early life nerve injury is not absent but suppressed by neuroimmune activity and that "latent" pain can still emerge at adolescence, when the neuroimmune profile changes. The data may explain why neuropathic pain is rare in young children and also why it can emerge, for no observable reason, in adolescent patients.

The effects of peripheral nerve injury on somatosensory processing and pain are highly dependent upon the age at which the damage occurs. Adult nerve injury rapidly triggers neuropathic pain, but this is not so if the same nerve injury is performed in animals below postnatal day (P) 28, consistent with observations in paediatric patients. However, longitudinal studies show that pain hypersensitivity emerges later in life, when the animal reaches adolescence, an observation that could be of clinical importance. Here we discuss the evidence that the central consequences of nerve damage are critically determined by the status of neuroimmune regulation at different ages. In the first postnatal weeks, when spinal somatosensory circuits are undergoing synaptic reorganisation, the ‘default’ neuroimmune response is skewed in an anti-inflammatory direction, suppressing the excitation of dorsal horn neurons and preventing the onset of neuropathic pain. As animals grow up and the central nervous system matures, the neuroimmune profile shifts in a pro-inflammatory direction, unmasking a ‘latent’ pain response to an earlier nerve injury. The data predicts that nerve injury in infancy and childhood could go unnoticed at the time, but emerge as clinically ‘unexplained’ or ‘functional’ pain in adolescence.

BackgroundPeripheral nerve injuries can trigger neuropathic pain in adults but cause little or no pain when they are sustained in infancy or early childhood. This is confirmed in rodent models where neonatal nerve injury causes no pain behaviour. However, delayed pain can arise in man some considerable time after nerve damage and to examine this following early life nerve injury we have carried out a longer term follow up of rat pain behaviour into adolescence and adulthood.ResultsSpared nerve injury (SNI) or sham surgery was performed on 10 day old (P10) rat pups and mechanical nociceptive reflex thresholds were analysed 3, 7, 14, 21, 28, 38 and 44 days post surgery. While mechanical thresholds on the ipsilateral side are not significantly different from controls for the first 2–3 weeks post P10 surgery, after that time period, beginning at 21 days post surgery (P31), the SNI group developed following early life nerve injury significant hypersensitivity compared to the other groups. Ipsilateral mechanical nociceptive threshold was 2-fold below that of the contralateral and sham thresholds at 21 days post surgery (SNI-ipsilateral 28 (±5) g control groups 69 (±9) g, p < 0.001, 3-way ANOVA, n = 6 per group). Importantly, no effect was observed on thermal thresholds. This hypersensivity was accompanied by macrophage, microglial and astrocyte activation in the DRG and dorsal horn, but no significant change in dorsal horn p38 or JNK expression. Preemptive minocycline (daily 40 mg/kg, s.c) did not prevent the effect. Ketamine (20 mg/kg, s.c), on the other hand, produced a dose-dependent reversal of mechanical nociceptive thresholds ipsilateral to the nerve injury such that thresholds return to control levels at the highest doses of 20 mg/Kg.ConclusionsWe report a novel consequence of early life nerve injury whereby mechanical hypersensitivity only emerges later in life. This delayed adolescent onset in mechanical pain thresholds is accompanied by neuroimmune activation and NMDA dependent central sensitization of spinal nociceptive circuits. This delayed onset in mechanical pain sensitivity may provide clues to understand the long term effects of early injury such as late onset phantom pain and the emergence of complex adolescent chronic pain syndromes.

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