Recent advances in neonatal pain research.
Pain accompanies most of illnesses. Pain results in from activation of a specific sensory system and is not direct result of an illness. Pain system may be activated early in the fetal development before its projections will penetrate the frontal cortex. Therefore, painful experience may induce some physiological consequences even it has been not perceived as pain and may lead to the long-lasting and profound consequences. Noxious stimuli applied in the developmental period may exert dramatical effects upon growing children. Human infants and neonatal rats demonstrate hyperresponsivity to nociceptive input that may result in hyperalgesia. After birth, peripheral cutaneous innervation, neuroendocrine functions and mechanisms of inflammation still undergo developmental changes. The neurotransmitters of the inhibitory descending system (5HT, NE, DA) develop late or postnatally. Progress in research on the developmental aspects of nociceptive transmission is necessary basis for advances in pharmacology of pain and analgesia for fetuses in the last trimester, preterm and term neonates.
Kostarczyk
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Department of Anatomy, University School of Medical Sciences, Poznań.
D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D001921:Brain / Q000196:embryology / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology*; D005314:Embryonic and Fetal Development; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D010146:Pain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D051381:Rats