MOLECULAR PAIN

H3A 2B2, Canada Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleIntroduction Neuropathic pain is a debilitating condition that arises as a “direct consequence of a lesion or disease affecting the somatosensory system ” [1]. Nerve injury is accompanied by many alterations in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord which play a role in driving and maintaining the accompanying pain. One such alteration that remains controversial is the question of whether or not inhibitory interneurons in the dorsal horn are lost in conditions of pain [2,3]. This is an important question to resolve, as these inhibitory inter-neurons play an important role in modulating sensory in-formation before it is forwarded to higher brain centers. Most pain related information is forwarded from the periphery to the central nervous system by unmyelinated primary afferents (C fibres) called nociceptors. They have been divided into two roughly distinct populations based on neurochemical and anatomical criteria: the peptidergic and non-peptidergic C fibres [4-7]. Of particular interes