Papers of the Week

Men and women with chronic pain report increased alcohol use and are more likely to be diagnosed with alcohol use disorder. The relationship between alcohol use and pain is bidirectional with alcohol used as an analgesic, but chronic intake increasing pain. Sex differences in the relationship between chronic pain and alcohol are reported in the clinical and preclinical literature, but due to this bidirectional relationship, it is challenging to investigate the mechanisms that contribute to these differences. Thus, animal models of chronic pain are needed to characterize the efficacy of ethanol as an analgesic in males and females. The current experiments tested the hypothesis that ethanol would differentially reduce pain behaviors in male and female mice in chronic neuropathic pain.