Mecanismos epigenéticos na cronificação da dor: revisão sistemática e cienciometria

Abstract

Currently, the International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or similar to, that associated with actual or potential tissue injury". While acute pain plays a protective role, chronic pain demonstrates a damaging nature. Epigenetics is defined as heritable changes in genes expression that do not alter the sequence of nucleotides in the DNA. There are two main mechanisms involved in epigenetics, changes in histones and the pattern of DNA methylation. The aim of the present study was to Characterize potential genes and processes involved in epigenetic changes that promote the process of chronic nociceptive and neuropathic pain. For this purpose a systematic review of the literature was performed exclusively in the Web of Science Base (WoS) / Core Collection. After refinement the data were exported to the CiteSpace program to search for trends, through visualization network analysis, and studies linking epigenetic regulation in pain chronification. The results demonstrate poor collaboration among researchers from varied countries, as well as candidate genes for possible involvement in the pain chronification process are rarely repeated among studies. Although studies demonstrate that changes in DNA methylation and histones caused by sustained pain contribute to pain chronification, the field of research is broad and still undestudied.