title: Nociceptive input from the rat thoracolumbar fascia to lumbar dorsal horn neurones.
abstract: In anaesthetised rats, systematic electrophysiological recordings from dorsal horn neurones in spinal segments Th13-L5 were made to obtain information about the spinal nociceptive processing from the lumbar thoracolumbar fascia. Six to fourteen percent of the neurones in the spinal segments Th13-L2 had nociceptive input from the thoracolumbar fascia in naïve animals, no neurones responsive to input from the lumbar fascia were found in segments L3-L5. The segmental location of the receptive fields in the fascia was shifted 2-4 segments caudally relative to the spinal segment recorded from. Most neurones were convergent in that they received additional input from other deep somatic tissues in the low back (87%) and from the skin in the abdominal wall or the proximal leg (50%). The proportion of neurones responsive to input from the thoracolumbar fascia rose significantly from 4% to 15% (P<0.05) in animals with an experimentally-induced inflammation of a low back muscle (multifidus). Moreover, neurones in spinal segment L3 - that did not receive input from the fascia in normal animals - responded to fascia input in animals with inflamed muscle. The data suggest that the nociceptive input from the thoracolumbar fascia contributes to the pain in low back pain patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurophysiology, Centre for Biomedicine and Medical Technology Mannheim, Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, 68167 Mannheim, Germany. ulrich.hoheisel@medma.uni-heidelberg.de
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Hoheisel
authors.forename: Toru
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Taguchi
authors.forename: Rolf-Detlef
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Treede
authors.forename: Siegfried
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mense
mesh_terms: D000344:Afferent Pathways / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D005205:Fascia / Q000294:innervation* / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology; D017116:Low Back Pain / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008161:Lumbosacral Region / Q000294:innervation* / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D009619:Nociceptors / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology*; D020671:Posterior Horn Cells / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D011984:Sensory Receptor Cells / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology*