Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have found physical evidence of a previously unknown communication between nerves on opposite sides of the body. In the May 2004 issue of Annals of Neurology, the scientists describe how cutting a major nerve in one paw of a group of rats resulted in a significant decrease in skin nerve endings in the corresponding area of the opposite limb. The study, released today on the journal's website, may have major implications for the care of patients with nerve damage and also calls into question the common practice of using tissues on the opposite side of the body as controls in scientific experiments.

"Patients with pain syndromes related to nerve damage sometimes report symptoms on the side opposite their injury as well, but those reports are usually discounted because there has been no biological framework for the phenomenon," says Anne Louise Oaklander, MD, PhD, director of the MGH Nerve Injury Unit, the report's principal author. "Our evidence means that these reports can no longer be ignored and gives us a new direction for research."

It has been known for more than 100 years that, when a nerve is cut, skin nerve endings in the area supplied by that nerve quickly disappear. This is because nerve cell bodies are actually located near the spinal cord, and nerve fibers called axons extend into the limbs. When axons are severed, downstream nerve endings are cut off from the cell body and die.

Reports of opposite-side sensory effects of injury date back to the American Civil War. However, no connections are known to exist between nerve cells supplying corresponding areas on the left and right sides. In previous research Oaklander and her colleagues examined nerve endings in patients with post-herpetic neuralgia persistent pain in an area of skin previously affected by shingles, also called herpes zoster. Along with an almost total loss of nerve endings at the site of the shin
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Contact: Sue McGreevey
smcgreevey@partners.org
617-724-2764
Massachusetts General Hospital
1-Apr-2004

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