Review article
The hidden side of Parkinson’s disease: Studying pain, anxiety and depression in animal models

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2018.10.004Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Non-motor symptoms are present in Parkinson’s disease.

  • Parkinson’s disease patients have a high prevalence of pain, anxiety and depression.

  • There is a variety of preclinical models of Parkinson’s disease.

  • Preclinical models can recapitulate non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease leading to the loss of midbrain dopamine neurons. It is well known and characterized by motor symptoms that are secondary to the loss of dopamine innervation, but it is also accompanied by a range of various non-motor symptoms, including pain and psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression. These non-motor symptoms usually appear at early stages of the disease, sometimes even before the first motor symptoms, and have a dramatic impact on the quality of life of the patients. We review here the present state-of-the-art concerning pain, anxiety and depression-like parameters in animal models of Parkinson’s disease.

Section snippets

The non-motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease patients

This section provides a rapid overview of some clinical data concerning pain, anxiety and depression in Parkinson’s disease. For more details concerning these clinical aspects, please refer to the following references (Blanchet and Brefel-Courbon, 2017; Chaudhuri et al., 2006; Schapira et al., 2017).

Animal models to study Parkinson’s disease

This section mostly focuses on animal models (rodents and monkeys) of Parkinson’s disease for which data related to pain-, anxiety- or depression-like behaviors are available. For a more exhaustive view of existing models, readers can consult following reviews (Bastías-Candia et al., 2018; Bové and Perier, 2012; Creed and Goldberg, 2018; Francardo, 2018; Grandi et al., 2018; Koprich et al., 2017; Volta and Melrose, 2017).

Nociception and pain in rodent Parkinson’s disease models (Fig. 2)

According to the definition from the International Association for the Study of Pain, pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage”. This sensory/emotional duality is a critical element. It distinguishes pain from nociception, which encompasses “the neural process of encoding noxious stimuli” and does not necessarily imply the presence of pain. However, distinguishing pain from nociception remains

Conclusion

Beyond dopamine cell loss and motor symptoms, Parkinson’s disease is a complex disease that leads to a variety of non-motor symptoms, including pain, anxiety and depression in a notable proportion of patients. For decades, experimental research on Parkinson’s disease has focused on the motor symptoms as well as on the dopamine system. Indeed, until recently, most data in animal models were limited to dopaminergic alterations, which could not explain Parkinson’s disease semiology, particularly

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique [contracts UPR3212 and UMR5293], the University of Strasbourg, the University of Bordeaux, the Agence Nationale de la Recherche [ANR-15-CE37-0005-02; Euridol ANR-17-EURE-0022], the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale [FDT20170437322], the NeuroTime Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate and by a NARSAD distinguished investigator grant from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation [24220].

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