Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6260649 | Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences | 2016 | 8 Pages |
â¢Early life pain induces long-term changes in response to pain, anxiety, and stress.â¢Injury-induced changes in pain, anxiety and stress are due to increased opioid tone.â¢Analgesic administration at the time of injury mitigates the negative consequences.â¢Former NICU infants similarly display a hypo-sensitive/hyper-sensitive response profile.
From an evolutionary perspective, adaptations of an organism to its early environment are essential for survival. The occurrence of early life perturbation, coincident with increased developmental plasticity, provides a unique opportunity for such adaptations to become programmed and persist throughout life. However, adaptations that are beneficial to maintaining homeostasis in one's early environment may result in extreme response strategies that confer vulnerability or dysfunction later in life. This review summarizes recent findings in human and animal studies demonstrating that early life pain results in a hypo-sensitive/hyper-sensitive phenotype in response to acute and persistent pain and stress later in life. Changes in cognition and immune function in response to early life pain have also been observed. Recent data on the neural mechanisms underlying these long-term changes are discussed, as well as potential strategies to minimize the impact of early life pain.
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