Drug Candidates for the Treatment of Pain

Dear Colleagues,

Pain is a serious public health issue worldwide. It affects 1 in 5 people both in the United States and in Europe, producing dramatic biological, physical, psychological, and social consequences on affected patients, as well as a great economic load on healthcare systems and societies.

Nevertheless, pain is often an inadequately treated problem. NSAIDs have often a limited efficacy, while the use of opioids is limited by the risk of addiction, the development of tolerance, and vulnerability to hyperalgesia. Moreover, for many pathologies (e.g., fibromyalgia, phantom pain), there is still a lack of effective analgesics.

There is a critical need for effective new drugs for pain that can maintain efficacy over long-term treatment regimens without the risk of tolerance, addiction, and other negative side-effects. Further, understanding the underlying mechanism causing pain is crucial for the development of novel therapeutics and also for the ability to recognize which type of analgesic to prescribe to pain patients.

In this Special Issue, the state of the art related to research on recent candidate drugs for the treatment of pain is presented, together with an analysis of emerging targets for pain treatment, with the aim to provide researchers with the most cutting-edge information in this field.

Dr. William Raffaeli
Prof. Carolina Muscoli
Dr. Dominique Massotte
Guest Editors

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