A Transcriptomic Analysis of Neuropathic Pain in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex after Nerve Injury

Neuropathic pain is a troublesome pathological condition without suitable treatments. In this study, we performed RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis to reveal transcriptomic profiles of Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) from chronic constriction injury (CCI) rats. We found 1628 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were mainly involved in the inflammatory and immune process. Besides, cytokine signaling and other cell-defense related pathways mainly contribute to the occurrence and development of neuropathic pain. Then we classified the DEGs based on the time trend. Our results suggested that chemokines played a vital role in pain, and moreover, CCL5, CXCL9 and CXCL13, compared with CCL2, CCL3, CCL4, CCL6 and CCL7 had different time-dependent manners. In a word, targeting chemokines is of great significance to explore specific mechanisms and develop suitable drugs for neuropathic pain. Overall design: ACC mRNA profiles of sham and 0.5-day, 1-day, 3-day, 7-day and 14-day CCI rats