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Depression and chronic pain share an intricate, complex relationship, the comorbidity of which is reported to affect up to 80% of patients. This thesis demonstrated enhanced nociceptive responding to mechanical and cold, but not heat, stimuli in a well-validated animal model of depression, the olfactory bulbectomised (OB) rat. In addition, early life stress in the form of maternal deprivation (MD) resulted in enhanced nociceptive responding to mechanical and heat, but not cold, stimuli. OB animals exhibited exacerbated cold, but not mechanical, allodynia following spinal nerve ligation (SNL), a clinically relevant model of neuropathic pain. In addition, MD female, but not male, rats exhibited exacerbated mechanical and cold allodynia following SNL. Thus, neuropathic pain-related behaviour is enhanced in two models of affective disorders in a stimulus- and sex-dependent manner.
Despite the high comorbidity of these disorders, the neurobiological mechanisms mediating the relationship...
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