Publications
APS Bulletin • Volume 17, Number 3, 2007
Resource Reviews
John D. Loeser, MD, Department Editor
Emerging Strategies for the Treatment of Neuropathic Pain
Reviewed by Charles Argoff, MD
James N. Campbell, Allan I. Basbaum, Andre Dray, Ronald Dubner, Robert H. Dworkin, Christine N. Sang (Eds.), Seattle, IASP Press, 2006. Hard cover, 514 pages, ISBN 0-931092-61-2, $64 IASP members, $80 nonmembers.
As the editors state in the preface, the intention of this book is to provide a “blueprint for what is to come in the treatment of neuropathic pain.” Reader beware—it is not a practical review nor a guide to what treatments are currently available for neuropathic pain syndromes.
The book summarizes the results of a 5-day meeting held among 40 participants from academia and the pharmaceutical industry in Scottsdale, AZ, in April 2005. It includes background information that is clearly relevant to that meeting. The four main topics addressed at the meeting—peripheral nervous system targets, central nervous system targets, disease-specific targets, and the development of measurement tools and applications of new technologies— were chosen in large part because they reflected issues that are important for drug development.
Funding for both the conference and this book came from unrestricted educational grants from 13 different pharmaceutical companies, and a large part of the book was written before the meeting.
The book is organized into four main sections that reflect the meeting topics mentioned above. The first chapter of each section is a rapporteur report for each of the main topics. Each of these reports summarizes the discussions of the various groups that met during the meeting; these reports were in fact written during the meeting. I found these to be among the highlights of this book. They were each well written and extremely informative. One of the main drawbacks, however, for this book is that the chapters are unevenly written and do not always complement each other.
Although there is certainly much overlap among various topics regarding neuropathic pain, the reader should not have to endure repetitive information, especially in the same section of the book. In addition to the rapporteur reports, some of the chapters that stood out include Peripheral Nerve Generators of Neuropathic Pain; Opioids and Neuropathic Pain; The Role of Neuroimmune Activation in Chronic Neuropathic Pain and New Targets for Therapeutic Intervention; Pain Related to Inflammatory, Infectious and Toxic Neuropathies: Mechanisms and Perspectives on Treatment; The Depression-Pain Complex: Overlap Between the Two Problems; and Implications for Neuropathic Pain and Brain Imaging as a Surrogate Measure of Pain: Human and Animal Studies.
Despite the unevenness of some of the chapters, this is an excellent book that is clearly worth reading (and rereading) and is equally well suited for both experienced pain management clinicians and basic scientists. It is not an appropriate text for the clinical novice in pain management.
Dr. Argoff is director of the Cohn Pain Management Center at North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset, NY, and assistant professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine.