RESEARCH ARTICLE
TRP Receptors in Arthritis, Gaining Knowledge for Translation from Experimental Models
E.S. Fernandes1, 2, S. Awal2, R. Karadaghi2, S.D. Brain*, 2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2013Volume: 6
First Page: 50
Last Page: 61
Publisher ID: TOPAINJ-6-50
DOI: 10.2174/1876386301306010050
Article History:
Received Date: 09/08/2012Revision Received Date: 9/08/2012
Acceptance Date: 16/08/2012
Electronic publication date: 08/3/2013
Collection year: 2013
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Arthritis is a condition characterised by mainly pain, reduced joint movement and signs of inflammation, such as swelling. The disorder has many different types, of which osteoarthritis (a degenerative joint disease) and rheumatoid arthritis (a chronic autoimmune disease) are the two most common forms. There are >6 million sufferers in the UK and both conditions have a huge potential to impair capabilities and contribute to social and economic burdens. Whilst there are a wide range of arthritic therapies available, many patients under treatment complain of poor pain relief. Thus there is a need for novel therapeutic approaches, and the transient receptor potential (TRP) family of receptor channels has been investigated. One particular area of recent research has been the ligand-gated transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) channel. Findings from numerous pre-clinical models and scientific studies have shown that TRPV1 desensitisation, or the use of TRPV1 antagonists alleviates pain and some inflammatory aspects. New findings have started to unveil the potential of other TRP channels in mediating arthritic pain and inflammation. With the understanding that the currently available treatments for arthritis are limited, researchers have looked into the exciting prospect that TRP receptor antagonists may be developed into effective, specific drugs, which would potentially protect against the complications of arthritis. These antagonists are still under development, although only data from studies from pre-clinical models are currently available. This review acts to summarize knowledge of the potential influence of TRP receptors in arthritis to date.
