ArticleBritish journal of pharmacology2020
Opioid presynaptic disinhibition of the midbrain periaqueductal grey descending analgesic pathway.
Article in British journal of pharmacology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 45 citations in OpenAlex.
- Opioids to Treat Chronic Pain in the Older Adult: A Clinical Consensus to Guarantee Safety and Avoid Adverse Events.Drugs & aging · 2026Review
- Review
- Article
- Pain Perception and Modulation: Fundamental Neurobiology and Recent Advances.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Review
- Complex opioid driven modulation of glutamatergic and cholinergic neurotransmission in a GABAergic brain nucleus associated with emotion, reward and addiction.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Multimodal Analgesia in Cardiothoracic Procedure: Opioid and Non-opioid Pharmacology for Pain Management: Part 1.Annals of cardiac anaesthesia · 2025Review
- YTHDF1 in periaqueductal gray inhibitory neurons contributes to morphine withdrawal responses in mice.BMC medicine · 2024Article
- Single-neuron projectome-guided analysis reveals the neural circuit mechanism underlying endogenous opioid antinociception.National science review · 2024Article
- Cell-type specific molecular architecture for mu opioid receptor function in pain and addiction circuits.Neuropharmacology · 2023Review
- Persistent inflammation selectively activates opioid-sensitive phasic-firing neurons within the vlPAG.Journal of neurophysiology · 2023Article
- Key differences in regulation of opioid receptors localized to presynaptic terminals compared to somas: Relevance for novel therapeutics.Neuropharmacology · 2023Review
- Molecular identification of bulbospinal ON neurons by GPER, which drives pain and morphine tolerance.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2023Article
- The Underlying Mechanisms of Sleep Deprivation Exacerbating Neuropathic Pain.Nature and science of sleep · 2023Review
- Bulbospinal nociceptive ON and OFF cells related neural circuits and transmitters.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2023Review
- Cannabinoids and Opioids Differentially Target Extrinsic and Intrinsic GABAergic Inputs onto the Periaqueductal Grey Descending Pathway.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Review
- Kappa opioids inhibit the GABA/glycine terminals of rostral ventromedial medulla projections in the superficial dorsal horn of the spinal cord.The Journal of physiology · 2022Article
- Nucleus Tractus Solitarius Neurons Activated by Hypercapnia and Hypoxia Lack Mu Opioid Receptor Expression.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2022Article
- Cellular and circuit diversity determines the impact of endogenous opioids in the descending pain modulatory pathway.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2022Review
- Identifying c-fos Expression as a Strategy to Investigate the Actions of General Anesthetics on the Central Nervous System.Current neuropharmacology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
background and purposeThe midbrain periaqueductal grey (PAG) plays a central role in modulating pain through a descending pathway that projects indirectly to the spinal cord via the rostroventral medial medulla (RVM). While opioids are potent analgesics that target the PAG, their cellular actions on descending projection neurons are unclear. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH: Patch clamp recordings in voltage- and current-clamp mode were made from acutely prepared PAG slices from animals that received retrograde tracer injections into the RVM. KEY
resultsThe μ-agonist DAMGO reduced GABAergic evoked inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSCs) in retro-labelled, RVM-projecting neurons to a greater extent than in unlabelled neurons. The κ-opioid agonist U69593 reduced evoked IPSCs to a similar extent in both neuronal groups, while the δ-opioid agonist deltorphin-II was without effect. DAMGO and U69593 both produced a reduction in the rate, but not amplitude of spontaneous miniature IPSCs and asynchronous evoked IPSCs in retro-labelled neurons. DAMGO and U69593 also suppressed glutamatergic EPSCs in retro-labelled and unlabelled neurons. The DAMGO inhibition of evoked EPSCs, however, was less than that for evoked IPSCs in retro-labelled, but not unlabelled neurons. In current clamp, DAMGO produced a depolarizing increase in evoked postsynaptic potentials in retro-labelled neurons, but directly inhibited unlabelled neurons. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: These findings suggest that μ-opioids activate the descending analgesic pathway from the midbrain PAG by a combination of presynaptic disinhibition of RVM-projecting neurons and postsynaptic inhibition of presumptive interneurons.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.