Scientists have identified two mechanisms by which alcohol withdrawal is associated with chronic pain. In this respect informs Scripps Institute.
A consequence of long-term alcohol use is pain: more than half of people with alcoholism experience constant pain of one type or another. This includes alcoholic neuropathy, which is nerve damage, and many other issues. Therefore, during abstinence, alcoholics may experience allodynia, in which an irritant is perceived as painful, which is common in healthy people.
Marisa Roberto and her colleagues set out to find out exactly how alcohol contributes to pain. To do this, they compared three groups of adult mice: animals that were addicted to alcohol (binge drinkers), those who had limited access to alcohol and were not considered addicts (moderate drinkers), and those who were given no alcohol.
Dependent mice developed allodynia during alcohol withdrawal, and subsequent access to alcohol significantly reduced pain sensitivity. However, in half of the non-alcoholic mice, pain sensitivity also increased when alcohol was discontinued. However, unlike addicted mice, this allodynia did not disappear with repeated exposure to alcohol.
When the authors measured the levels of inflammatory proteins in the animals, they found that while both groups had signs of inflammation, the dependent mice had a number of additional unique proteins in their blood. This indicates that different molecular mechanisms can cause two types of pain in a similar situation. It follows that these two conditions may require different medications to deal with pain.
“These two types of pain are very different, so it’s important to be able to ‘see’ them and develop different treatments for each type,” the authors summarize.
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