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J Neurophysiol 87: 1086-1093, 2002;
0022-3077/02 $5.00
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The Journal of Neurophysiology Vol. 87 No. 2 February 2002, pp. 1086-1093
Copyright ©2002 by the American Physiological Society

Plastic Changes in Nociceptive Transmission of the Rat Spinal Cord With Advancing Age

Koichi Iwata,1 Tetsuo Fukuoka,2 Eji Kondo,2 Yoshiyuki Tsuboi,3 Akimasa Tashiro,1,3 Koichi Noguchi,2 Yuji Masuda,1 Toshifumi Morimoto,1 and Kenro Kanda4

 1Department of Oral Physiology, Osaka University, Faculty of Dentistry, Osaka 565-0871;  2Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo 663-8501;  3Department of Physiology, School of Dentistry, Nihon University, Tokyo 101-8310; and  4Department of Central Nervous System, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Tokyo 173, Japan

Iwata, Koichi, Tetsuo Fukuoka, Eji Kondo, Yoshiyuki Tsuboi, Akimasa Tashiro, Koichi Noguchi, Yuji Masuda, Toshifumi Morimoto, and Kenro Kanda. Plastic Changes in Nociceptive Transmission of the Rat Spinal Cord With Advancing Age. J. Neurophysiol. 87: 1086-1093, 2002. To understand characteristics of the pain system in the elderly, we investigated the electrophysiological properties of nociceptive neurons in the lumbar spinal dorsal horn of aged (29-34-mo old) and adult (7-13-mo old) rats. The responses of nociceptive neurons to noxious thermal stimulation, as well as the spontaneous firing rate, were significantly higher in the aged as compared with adult rats. Furthermore, the size of the high-threshold receptive field area of wide dynamic range neurons was larger (P < 0.01) and that of the low-threshold area was smaller (P < 0.05) in aged rats than in adult rats. The increased nociceptive neuronal activity in the aged rats correlated with the finding that the paw withdrawal latency was significantly shorter in the aged rats than those of the adult rats following heat stimulation of the hind paw (P < 0.05). Reversible local anesthetic block of descending pathways resulted in a dramatic increase in neuronal activity in adult rats but had little effect in aged rats. There was also a significant loss of serotoninergic and noradrenergic fibers in the spinal dorsal horn of the aged rats. These results demonstrate an age-related plasticity in spinal nociceptive processing that is related to impairment of descending modulatory pathways.




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