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The long held view that a newborn infant’s immature nervous system reduced or eliminated their ability to experience pain has been replaced by our current understanding that infants and even premature infants and older fetuses experience pain. Additionally, research has demonstrated developmental difference in pain experience whereby infants and toddlers exhibit greater distress in response to painful stimuli than do older children. The need to develop effective pain management for the pediatric population is further supported by animal and human research demonstrating that early painful experiences can result in increased distress in response to later painful experiences.

Modeling sickle cell pain

Effects of fetal alcohol exposure on pain and analgesia

Effects of neonatal opioid use on pain and analgesia

Using herpes simplex virus to understand the neurobiology of neuropathic pain.

Painful experiences for most children are limited to infrequent illnesses and medical procedures that result in acute but brief pain. In contrast, children with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) experience significant vaso-occlusive pain episodes lasting for hours to days at a time. These painful episodes are the defining feature of their illness, with approximately 70% of individuals with SCD experiencing multiple severe painful episodes per year . Our ability to effectively treat these painful episodes is hampered by our limited understanding of the mechanisms of SCD pain. By increasing our knowledge of the mechanisms of this pain, we will be better able to treat SCD pain in the human population.

Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, Neuroscience
University of South Carolina School of Medicine
6439 Garners Ferry Road
Columbia, SC 29209