Animal Models of Pain and Anti-inflammatory Treatments
Animal models are critical to the field of pain research, both for the study of mechanisms and the testing of novel therapeutics. Unfortunately, many findings that appear promising in animals fail to translate to human disease, underscoring the criticality of thoughtful model establishment and meaningful behavioral testing. In this chapter, we review current methods for the measurements of mechanical pain, thermal pain, and spontaneous pain in mice and rats. We then discuss different models with a focus on rat and mouse models of inflammatory and neuropathic pain. While most of these models involve significant inflammation, not all respond similarly to anti-inflammatory treatments. We examine the varying efficacy of common anti-inflammatory treatments in this range of models and highlight promising pro-resolution and/or immunoregulatory treatments where relevant.
