Altered Paw Pain Thresholds due to Different Spinal Cord Stimulation Parameters

Chronic pain causes individuals substantial personal distress and economic hardship as traditional opioid prescription treatment can be ineffective and expensive. An alternative treatment to opioid prescription is spinal cord stimulation. In this subset of a larger study, experimenters assessed effects of different stimulation parameters used to treat simulated chronic pain in rats (spared nerve injury simulation; SNI). Rats were assigned to one of seven treatments (N=49); Naive, Sham, SNI-no treatment, High-Density Active Balance (stimulation), High-Density Passive Balance, Low-Density Active Balance, and Low-Density Passive Balance. Pain tolerance was analyzed via the von Frey method of withdrawal threshold measurement. Rats were tested at baseline before SNI, five days post-SNI, and 48 hours post-stimulation. SNI lesions had the expected effect of increased ipsilateral paw sensitivity, and analyses revealed that all treatments except Low-Density Passive Balance were effective in alleviating paw sensitivity, though pain thresholds never returned to baseline