Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) is a post-traumatic neuropathic pain condition of the limb. Although rare, CPRS is one of the most subjectively painful conditions known according to the McGill Pain Index. CRPS patients suffer from central and autonomic nervous system dysregulation and peripheral hyperalgesia. Interestingly, similar symptoms are also observed in alcoholic neuropathy, suggesting that the two conditions may be pathophysiologically accretive. Further, both CRPS and alcoholic neuropathy disproportionately affect people assigned female at birth (AFAB). Due to their overlapping symptomology and shared patient populations, we chose to investigate a model of combined CRPS and alcohol neuropathy in adult female rats in order to better understand the biobehavioral mechanisms underlying these conditions.

This project was conducted in collaboration with the Simon Lab in the Department of Physiology at LSUHSC and was made possible through the  contributions of numerous students, including Amy Urbina Lopez (Summer Undergraduate Student 2019), Bradley Trimble (Medical Student, 2019-2020), and Roshaun Mitchell-Cleveland (PREP Scholar, 2020-2021). You can learn about the effects of our combined model of CRPS and alcoholic neuropathy on skeletal muscle myogenic gene expression here.