Metabolomics Implicates Altered Sphingolipids in Chronic Pain of Neuropathic Origin

January 22, 2012

By Gary J. Patti, Oscar Yanes, Leah P Shriver, Jean-Phillipe Courade, Ralf Tautenhahn, Marianne Manchester & Gary Siuzdak

Neuropathic pain is a debilitating condition for which the development of effective treatments has been limited by an incomplete understanding of its chemical basis. We show by using untargeted metabolomics that sphingomyelin-ceramide metabolism is altered in the dorsal horn of rats with neuropathic pain and that the upregulated, endogenous metabolite N,N-dimethylsphingosine induces mechanical hypersensitivity in vivo. These results demonstrate the utility of metabolomics to implicate unexplored biochemical pathways in disease.

Nature Chemical Biology, 8, 232-234, 2012