Pain and Neuroimmune Interactions

the long version

This volume is a result of an International Symposium on pain and neuroimmune interactions, held in Beirut, Lebanon, in May of 1999. The results of research on the neural mechanisms that relate tissue damage to pain show that the sensation of pain and suffering can be considered as part of mechanisms that involve not only sizeable areas in the brain but also simultaneous activations of the immune and the endocrine systems. Pain involves the sharing of molecular mechanisms between the nervous, immune and endocrine systems that can interact at peripheral and, ultimately, central levels. Chronic pain can then be viewed as a corollary of the imbalance in the cross-talk between these systems, which could lead to new treatment strategies. The aim of this volume is not to deal with acute pain that serves as an alarm signal, but to attempt to explain the molecular mechanisms of chronic pain considered as a multifactorial syndrome or disease.