A preconditioning nerve lesion inhibits mechanical pain hypersensitivity following subsequent neuropathic injury

A preconditioning stimulus can trigger a neuroprotective phenotype in the nervous system - a preconditioning nerve lesion causes a significant increase in axonal regeneration, and cerebral preconditioning protects against subsequent ischemia. We hypothesized that a preconditioning nerve lesion induces gene/protein modifications, neuronal changes, and immune activation that may affect pain sensation following subsequent nerve injury. We examined whether a preconditioning lesion affects neuropathic pain and neuroinflammation after peripheral nerve injury.

We found that a preconditioning crush injury to a terminal branch of the sciatic nerve seven days before partial ligation of the sciatic nerve (PSNL; a model of neuropathic pain) induced a significant attenuation of pain hypersensitivity, particularly mechanical allodynia. A preconditioning lesion of the tibial nerve induced a long-term significant increase in paw-withdrawal threshold to mechanical stimuli and paw-withdrawal latency to thermal stimuli, after PSNL. A preconditioning lesion of the common peroneal induced a smaller but significant short-term increase in paw-withdrawal threshold to mechanical stimuli, after PSNL. There was no difference between preconditioned and unconditioned animals in neuronal damage and macrophage and T-cell infiltration into the dorsal root ganglia (DRGs) or in astrocyte and microglia activation in the spinal dorsal and ventral horns.

These results suggest that prior exposure to a mild nerve lesion protects against adverse effects of subsequent neuropathic injury, and that this conditioning-induced inhibition of pain hypersensitivity is not dependent on neuroinflammation in DRGs and spinal cord. Identifying the underlying mechanisms may have important implications for the understanding of neuropathic pain due to nerve injury.