SNG PAIN TEAM

Sng should be considered as a unique symptom differing from pain because current treatment for soreness is unsatisfied and a different underlying mechanism underpinning sng development has been suggested. However, sng is largely ignored because sng may be treated as a mild form of pain when it commonly coexists with pain. In Chinese society, pain is often described as a compound word “sng(acid)-pain” (痠痛), in which sng (pronounced as sə-ng) is a Taiwanese word that represents the state of feeling sore (or tissue acidosis). In pain clinic, soreness (or “sng”) is not only a characteristic sensory phenotype of various acute and chronic pain syndromes (e.g., delayed onset muscle soreness, fibromyalgia, and radicular pain), but also a sign of successful analgesia for acupuncture and many forms of physical therapy. Thus, the nature of soreness (sng) is not always nociceptive and should be defined as a way to distinguish it from pain. However, in English dictionary, soreness means the quality of being painful and uncomfortable because of injury or too much use. To facilitate the investigation of molecular and neurobiological mechanism of soreness sensation and its clinical impact, we have proposed a novel theory of “sngception (sng- ception)” to describe the response of the somatosensory nervous system to sense tissue acidosis and distinguish it from nociception

Our long-range goal is to establish a new concept in treating chronic sng-pain associated with tissue acidosis. The objective is to probe the molecular determinants and sensory neuron subtypes involved in sngception and distinguish it from nociception. Our central hypothesis is that sngception is distinguishable from nociception; and proprioceptors are one of the neuron subtypes involved in sngception. The hypothesis is based on our preliminary data that showed conditional knockout ASIC3 in proprioceptors but not nociceptors abolished the acid-induced chronic sng-pain and proprioceptors play an important role in pain chronicity. Also, we have found the segregation of sngception from nociception in a spine-injury patient who lost most somatosensory function in his right leg, but maintained proprioception and motor function; whereas the patient felt sng of right leg after a long-distance walking. In addition, Sng has differential impacts from pain on functional brain networks and health-related quality of life in Taiwanese chronic low back pain patients.

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