Nerve injury can alter the functioning of the immune system

Injuries to peripheral nerves are common: stretching, pressure, a cut, a blow — and the body triggers a response that should help restore tissues. However, the results of animal studies demonstrate that the immune system can enter a state comparable to systemic inflammation and maintain this state for a long time after injury.

In males, the increase in inflammatory markers in the blood was bright and stable. In the females, the indicators have hardly changed. It would seem that the absence of an outbreak of inflammation should provide protection, but the experiment gave an unexpectedly different result. When blood from injured animals was injected into healthy mice, the recipients experienced increased sensitivity to pain in both cases.

That is, the mechanism that triggers the widespread immune response works in both sexes, but involves different biological pathways. As Jeffrey Graves, Professor of Pain, emphasized, this opens up a separate line of research: the mechanisms of pain in women may differ fundamentally, and these pathways have yet to be revealed.

The findings force us to look at the consequences differently, which were previously considered purely local. Nerve injuries are often thought of as a problem of one area of the body, but such events can affect the entire immune system and change its work for a long time. Such changes are considered as one of the risk factors for developing chronic pain, anxiety, and even depression.

The authors emphasize that understanding that the body reacts differently depending on gender creates the prerequisites for personalized approaches to pain treatment. According to Professor Ji Zhang, even a small nerve injury can affect the entire body, and this should be taken into account when choosing a therapy strategy.