Study finds nerve damage can affect opposite si...( gles outbreak they also found that alm...),Health

gles outbreak, they also found that almost half the nerve endings on the opposite side skin had been lost, even though patients did not report pain on that side. But since shingles is caused by the varicella zoster virus, which also causes chicken pox, there was a possibility that the damage had been caused by viral spread through the spinal cord.

In the current study, Oaklander and her co-author Jennifer Brown describe their experiment in three groups of rats an experimental group in which the tibial branch of the sciatic nerve was cut in one hind paw and two control groups, one which had sham surgery and the other had no procedures. Within one week of injury, rats in the experimental group lost almost all skin nerve endings in the part of the paw supplied by the tibial nerve. Surprisingly, they also lost 54 percent of nerve endings in the corresponding area in the opposite paw. No changes were seen in either control group. The researchers also examined the opposite-limb-area supplied by the uncut nearby sural branch of the sciatic nerve and found no change in nerve endings.

"This loss of nerve fibers in the contralateral limb is so precise being confined to areas innervated by the matching nerve that the communication is likely to involve nerve cells or the supporting glial cells," says Oaklander, an assistant professor of Anesthesia and Neurology at Harvard Medical School. "We need to look into what regulates this communication and how it may be altered to help treat nerve injury and pain patients."

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Contact: Sue McGreevey
smcgreevey@partners.org
617-724-2764
Massachusetts General Hospital
1-Apr-2004

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