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. 2023 Nov 8:16:3747-3758.
doi: 10.2147/JPR.S422885. eCollection 2023.

Can Myofascial Trigger Points Involve Nociplastic Pain? A Scoping Review on Animal Models

Wiktoria Matuska  1 , Jakub Matuska  2 , Elżbieta Skorupska  2 , Maria Siwek  3 , Pablo Herrero  4 , Manel M Santafé  5
Affiliations

Can Myofascial Trigger Points Involve Nociplastic Pain? A Scoping Review on Animal Models

Wiktoria Matuska et al. J Pain Res. .

Abstract

Nociplastic pain is a non-specific, regional pain lasting more than three months, characterised by the onset of hypersensitivity, despite no clear evidence of tissue damage. It is a relatively new classified type of pain. As a result, there has not yet been much work describing its precise modelling. The mechanism of its formation needs to be clearly explained. Authors point out that the occurrence of myofascial trigger points (MTrPs) can lead to this type of pain as one possibility. This paper summarises the available literature on modelling nociplastic pain and MTrPs. It complies with studies describing animal model creation and presents the results of performed experiments. The literature search was conducted in December 2022 and included the following databases: PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. In this scoping review, six studies were included. Two described the creation of animal models of nociplastic pain, one adapted old models to nociplastic pain, and three described the modelling of MTrPs. This is the first paper pointing in the possible direction of detecting and studying the correlation between MTrPs and nociplastic pain in animal models. However, there is currently insufficient evidence to describe MTrPs as nociplastic, as few studies with animal models exist.

Keywords: autonomic nervous system; chronic pain; hyperalgesia; myofascial pain; referred pain.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart of the data extraction process.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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