Nociceptive brain activity as a measure of analgesic efficacy in infants

Caroline Hartley; Eugene P Duff; Gabrielle Green; Gabriela Schmidt Mellado; Alan Worley; Richard Rogers; Rebeccah Slater

doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aah6122

Nociceptive brain activity as a measure of analgesic efficacy in infants

Sci Transl Med. 2017 May 3;9(388):eaah6122. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aah6122.

Authors

Caroline Hartley¹, Eugene P Duff², Gabrielle Green¹, Gabriela Schmidt Mellado¹, Alan Worley³, Richard Rogers⁴, Rebeccah Slater⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK.
² Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK.
³ Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London WC1N 3JH, UK.
⁴ Nuffield Department of Anaesthesia, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK.
⁵ Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK. rebeccah.slater@paediatrics.ox.ac.uk.

Abstract

Pain in infants is undertreated and poorly understood, representing a major clinical problem. In part, this is due to our inability to objectively measure pain in nonverbal populations. We present and validate an electroencephalography-based measure of infant nociceptive brain activity that is evoked by acute noxious stimulation and is sensitive to analgesic modulation. This measure should be valuable both for mechanistic investigations and for testing analgesic efficacy in the infant population.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Analgesics / therapeutic use*
Electroencephalography
Female
Humans
Infant
Male
Pain / drug therapy*

Substances

Analgesics

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances

Grants and funding