Discovery of Novel Mechanisms for Idiopathic Pain Disorders Through Genome Wide Approaches

Abstract

This presentation will introduce an overview of recent findings of genetic variants associated with chronic pain, focusing on recent discoveries from a large cohort study of painful temporomandibular disorders (TMD), the leading cause of orofacial pain. The Orofacial Pain: Prospective Evaluation and Risk Assessment (OPPERA) study was designed to identify risk factors for development of TMD. Recognized as a complex condition with biological and psychosocial risk factors, TMD has also been shown to have a substantial genetic component. Dr. Smith will discuss genome‐wide and bioinformatics approaches that have revealed etiological mechanisms underlying TMD, representing novel pathways of vulnerability. This work has implicated genetic variation associated with the presence of chronic pain, as well as polymorphisms associated with intermediate phenotypes known to be major risk factors for TMD development. Data from stratified analyses indicate certain pathways may be distinct between sexes. To understand the functional significance of these novel discoveries, additional behavioral and bioinformatics studies have been performed that show convergent lines of evidence pointing to immunological as well as neurological mechanisms. The state of knowledge about genetic contributors to orofacial pain and its management will be summarized with an emphasis on how these findings may be applied for personalized and targeted treatment of pain.Support or Funding InformationThis work was supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) grant number U01DE017018, and by a K12 Biomedical Researcher Development Scholarship in TMJD and Orofacial Pain (K12DE022793).This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.