Unexpectedly decreased plasma cytokines in patients with chronic back pain

Abstract

IntroductionChronic back pain is one of the most important socioeconomic problems that affects the global population. Elevated levels of inflammatory mediators, such as cytokines, have been correlated with pain, but their role in chronic back pain remains unclear. The effectiveness of anti-inflammatory drugs seems to be limited for chronic back pain. The authors wanted to investigate the levels of inflammatory mediators in long-term medically treated patients with persistent chronic back pain.MethodsCytokine plasma levels of patients with chronic back pain (n=23), compared to pain-free healthy controls (n=30), were investigated by immunoassay. Patients with chronic back pain were exposed to long-term conservative medical therapy with physiotherapy and anti-inflammatories, also combined with antidepressants and/or muscle-relaxants.ResultsThe patients with chronic back pain expressed lower levels of the chemokines MCP1, CCL5, and CXCL6 compared to pain-free healthy controls. Significantly lower concentrations of the anti-inflammatory cytokines, interleukin (IL)-4 and granulocyte-colony stimulating factor were also found. Interestingly, levels of proinflammatory cytokines (IL-2, IL-6, IL-1β, tumor necrosis factor alpha), IL-10, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor, and stromal cell-derived factor 1 alpha showed no significant differences between both groups.ConclusionThis decrease of inflammatory mediators in medically treated patients with chronic back pain is of unclear origin and might be either a long-term side effect of medical therapy or related to chronic pain. Further longitudinal research is necessary to elucidate the underlying cause of these findings.

Serum biomarkers in people with chronic low back pain and Modic 1 changes: a case-control study

“…The absence of pro-inflammatory cytokines increase in the serum of patients with active discopathy was also surprising. However, consistently with our findings, Capossela and colleagues did not find any differences in the serum levels of various inflammatory mediators including IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α between people with LBP and pain-free volunteers 21 . Correlations between serum biomarkers of redox status and cartilage degradation and intervertebral disc disease and low back pain have not been described yet.…”

Temporal Changes of Spinal Transcriptomic Profiles in Mice With Spinal Nerve Ligation

“…The results showed that the expression of CCL5, Cacna2d1, Cacna2d2, Cacnb2, Ccl21a, Gabrb3, GluA1, and GluA2 was significantly increased in SNL-7/28d group than that of in Sham-7/28d group. Interestingly, previous studies revealed that Cacna2d1 to 3, Ccl5, GluA1, and GluA2 were significantly implicated with the occurrence of pain (Bellessort et al, 2018;Capossela et al, 2018;Taylor et al, 2019), which were consistent with our results. Whereas, there has been virtually no reporting on dynamically studying the key molecular expression alteration.…”

Placenta-Expanded Stromal Cell Therapy in a Rodent Model of Simulated Weightlessness

“…While downregulation of traditional inflammatory markers in the brain parenchyma at 30 days post-HU was noted, this was not unexpected, as the brain may compensate or produce internal protection mediators that could dampen inflammation at this timepoint of collection. In the literature, there are multiple examples of cytokine downregulation which correlate with disruption of the immune system [ 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 ]. Most of these are chronic inflammatory conditions such as chronic pain or chronic fatigue syndrome.…”