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Genetics and Pain SIG Meetings
APS Annual Scientific Meeting
Washington, DC, May 2007
Preconference Session, Wednesday, May 2, 1-5 pm
INTEGRATING INDIVIDUAL RESPONDER APPROACHES AND PHARMACOGENETICS FOR CLINICAL PAIN RESEARCH
Faculty: Raymond Dionne, DDS PhD (Moderator); Janet Woodcock, MD; John Farrar, MD PhD
Panelists: Barbara Mittleman, MD; James Witter, MD PhD
Although pain is one of the most common reasons that people seek health care, it remains a uniquely personal experience that cannot be measured objectively. Pain continues to be an unmet healthcare need that is often poorly controlled in chronic diseases and at the end of life. The evaluation of patient-reported outcomes in clinical trials is usually measured
in the individual, but then grouped for comparison of different interventions. Not only is information about each individual's response to the intervention lost, the magnitude of the outcome in terms of the effectiveness for achieving some clinically important endpoint is also missed (i.e., did the treatment meaningfully improve the patient's symptoms or quality of life, and was this effect balanced by the incidence and severity of adverse events for that patient?). Factors that contribute to interindividual variability include gender, ethnicity, temperament, genetic polymorphisms, and variability in past pain experiences that may distort the use of standardized pain scales. The combined influence of these individual factors require valid and reliable individualized clinical outcome measures, possibly leading to the identification of subgroups of patients whose underlying molecular genetic mechanisms provide a favorable therapeutic ratio for analgesic interventions. The objectives of the workshop are to develop a research agenda to validate individual responder outcomes for evaluating analgesic interventions, to suggest strategies for identifying subpopulations of patients with genetic risk factors prognostic for analgesic outcomes in individuals, and to propose approaches to evaluate the relationships between pain phenotype and genotype while minimizing false positives
often observed in association studies.
Session 121, Thursday, May 3rd, 5:00-6:00
ANNUAL GENETICS AND PAIN SIG MEETING
This meeting will involve an informative presentation concerning some of the newer genetic methodologies available for the study of pain. After the presentation, the group will discuss goals for the coming year, collaborative research opportunities, educational opportunities and other agenda items.
Dr. William Lariviere will give a talk on updates to QTL mapping and covariance analyses of pain traits, non-pain traits and transcript levels using the recombinant inbred mouse model.
Session 330, Saturday, May 5th 1:30-3:30
EPIDEMIOLOGY OF PAIN: FROM CLASSICAL TO MOLECULAR APPROACHES
Focus Statement: Molecular epidemiology uses the same paradigm of exposure-disease assessment as classical or traditional epidemiology. The focus of this presentation is to discuss the principles and practice of classical and molecular epidemiology methods in pain research.
Educational Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will be able to: 1) state the principles and practice of classical epidemiology approaches in pain research; 2) state the strengths and limitations of molecular approaches in pain research.
Title: Epidemiology of Pain: From Classical to Molecular Approaches
Abstract Text: Pain is a complex trait resulting from the interaction between biological and non-biological factors. Building on the developments and techniques of molecular biology, the emerging field of molecular epidemiology is increasingly being applied in pain research. In this presentation, we advance the notion of integrating molecular approaches/methods of analyses to classical epidemiology methods in studies of pain in human populations. Dr. Michael Von Korff will present the principles and practice of classical epidemiology methods in pain research. Dr. Hyung-Suk will present the strengths, utility, and limitation of molecular approaches including candidate gene and genomewide scans. Dr. Reyes-Gibby will present pain studies assessing gene-gene and gene-environment interaction, their strengths, and limitations. Ample time will be allocated for discussion.
Recent Activities
NIH Grant Application Workshop (APS 2006)
Strategies for writing NIH grant applications for genetics and pain research will be shared. Program Officers from the different institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIDCR, NINDS, NIDA, NCI) will present on the following topic: 1) Identify relevant NIH grant mechanisms; 2) Discuss strategies for writing applications; 3) Describe the common strengths of successful applications and common mistakes made; 4) Discuss strategies for responding to reviews of applications.
NCBI Workshop (APS 2006)
Steve Pechous from the National Center for Biotechnology Information of the NIH will present "Identification and Correlation of Disease Genes to Phenotypes." This mini-lecture deals with the identification of a disease gene using NCBI's human genome assembly. The reference genome assembly, along with integrated maps, literature, and expression information comprises a powerful discovery system for exploring candidate human disease genes. The presentation will begin with EST sequences obtained from a patient, identify the gene(s) expressing them, download their sequences, determine the exon-intron structure and identify known SNPs in the ESTs, if any, that may contribute to the disease phenotype. We will also learn to determine what is known about a disease and associated genes and elucidate the biochemical and structural basis for the phenotype caused by the mutant protein.