Papers of the Week

Diabetic neuropathic pain (DNP) is a common complication of diabetes, and its complicated pathogenesis, as well as clinical manifestations, has brought great trouble to clinical treatment. The spinal cord is an important part of regulating the occurrence and development of DNP. Spinal microglia can regulate the activity of spinal cord neurons and have a regulatory effect on chronic pain. P2Y receptor is involved in DNP. P2Y and P2Y receptors belong to the Gi subtype of P2Y receptors, but there is no report that the P2Y receptor is involved in DNP. Closely related to many human diseases, the dysregulation of long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) has the effect of promoting or inhibiting the occurrence and development of diseases. The aim of this research is to investigate the function of the spinal cord P2Y receptor in type 2 DNP and to understand the function as well as the possible mechanism of lncRNA-UC.25 + (UC.25 +) in rat spinal cord P2Y receptor-mediated DNP. Our results showed that P2Y shRNA can reduce the expression of P2Y in DNP rats, thereby restraining the activation of microglia, decreasing the expression of inflammatory factors and the level of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK) phosphorylation. At the same time, UC.25 + shRNA can downregulate the expression of the P2Y receptor, reduce the release of inflammatory factors, and diminish the p38 MAPK phosphorylation, indicating that UC.25 + can alleviate spinal cord P2Y receptor-mediated DNP. The RNA immunoprecipitation result showed that UC.25 + enriched signal transducers and activators of transcription1 (STAT1) and positively regulated its expression. The chromatin immunoprecipitation result indicated that STAT1 combined with the promoter region of the P2Y receptor and positively regulated the expression of the P2Y receptor. Therefore, we infer that UC.25 + may alleviate DNP in rats by regulating the expression of the P2Y receptor in spinal microglia via STAT1.