Current Topics

Chronic pain affects a significant amount of the population and is responsible for vast worldwide socio-economic costs. Moreover, conventional therapies are not very effective in reducing pain; in fact, clinicians report only 50 percent pain relief among patients who respond to treatments. Since chronic pain is not a pure prolongation of acute pain, but is based on structural and functional alterations of neural circuity, understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying these alterations is crucial for developing new effective therapies.