Over half of the people carrying\u00a0HIV\u00a0experience chronic pain at\u00a0some\u00a0point, which is difficult\u00a0to treat.\u00a0In a new\u00a0JNeurosci\u00a0paper,\u00a0Hui-Lin Pan,\u00a0from\u00a0The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center,\u00a0and colleagues used\u00a0mice to explore\u00a0how\u00a0HIV\u00a0leads to\u00a0chronic pain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Previous\u00a0research\u00a0separately\u00a0linked\u00a0a\u00a0viral protein\u00a0called\u00a0glycoprotein<\/a> 120 (gp120)\u00a0to increased pain sensitivity\u00a0and overactive signaling\u00a0of\u00a0a type of nerve receptor\u00a0in the spine\u00a0to nerve\u00a0pain. Informed by these findings,\u00a0the researchers\u00a0sought\u00a0to\u00a0investigate whether gp120 influences signaling of this\u00a0nerve receptor.\u00a0Injecting gp120 into the spine of mice\u00a0increased the nerve receptor’s activity\u00a0through a mechanism\u00a0that affected a specific neuron population.\u00a0Using\u00a0a\u00a0combination\u00a0of\u00a0drug-based\u00a0and genetic approaches\u00a0targeting\u00a0the molecular players involved,\u00a0the researchers discovered they could reverse the\u00a0mechanism they\u00a0identified\u00a0and\u00a0reduce\u00a0pain\u00a0hypersensitivity\u00a0in the mice.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to the researchers, this work\u00a0shows how an\u00a0HIV-associated protein amplifies pain signaling in the spinal cord and\u00a0shows that\u00a0disrupting this mechanism may\u00a0lessen\u00a0pain\u00a0sensitivity.\u00a0Pan looks forward to continuing this work, saying, “We are particularly excited about developing therapeutic approaches\u00a0to disrupt [this mechanism, specifically by targeting\u00a0protein\u00a0interactions with the nerve receptor].\u00a0These targeted strategies may provide more precise and effective treatments for chronic neuropathic pain, not only in HIV,\u00a0but potentially in other conditions as well.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Source:<\/p>\n Journal reference:<\/p>\n Gautam, V., et al. (2026). HIV-1 gp120 induces nociceptive hypersensitivity via \u03b12\u03b4-1\u2013bound NMDA receptors at primary afferent\u2013excitatory neuron synapses. The Journal of Neuroscience.\u00a0DOI:\u00a010.1523\/JNEUROSCI.0368-26.2026.\u00a0https:\/\/www.jneurosci.org\/content\/early\/2026\/05\/22\/JNEUROSCI.0368-26.2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over half of the people carrying\u00a0HIV\u00a0experience chronic pain at\u00a0some\u00a0point, which is difficult\u00a0to treat.\u00a0In a new\u00a0JNeurosci\u00a0paper,\u00a0Hui-Lin Pan,\u00a0from\u00a0The University of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[258,9563,2359,44658,103,14794,150963,61,60,17349,12054,87,4055,2682,14530,89,52808],"class_list":["post-477913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-cancer","tag-chronic","tag-chronic-pain","tag-glycoprotein","tag-health","tag-hiv","tag-hypersensitivity","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nerve","tag-neuron","tag-neuroscience","tag-pain","tag-protein","tag-receptor","tag-research","tag-spine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}