Arjun Muralidharan, Susana G Sotocinal, Noosha Yousefpour, Nur Akkurt, Lucas V Lima, Shannon Tansley, Marc Parisien, Chengyang Wang, Jean-Sebastien Austin, Boram Ham, Gabrielle Mgs Dutra, Philippe Rousseau, Sioui Maldonado-Bouchard, Teleri Clark, Sarah F Rosen, Mariam R Majeed, Olivia Silva, Rachel Nejade, Xinyu Li, Stephania Donayre Pimentel, Christopher S Nielsen, G Gregory Neely, Chantal Autexier, Luda Diatchenko, Alfredo Ribeiro-da-Silva, Jeffrey S Mogil
Mice with experimental nerve damage can display long‑lasting neuropathic pain behavior. We show here that 4 months and later after nerve injury, male but not female mice displayed telomere length (TL) reduction and p53‑mediated cellular senescence in the spinal cord, resulting in maintenance of pain and associated with decreased lifespan. Nerve injury increased the number of p53‑positive spinal cord neurons, astrocytes, and microglia, but only in microglia was the increase male‑specific, matching a robust sex specificity of TL reduction in this cell type, which has been previously implicated in male‑specific pain processing...
April 15, 2022: Journal of Clinical Investigation