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Nature Medicine 14, 243 - 244 (2008)
doi:10.1038/nm0308-243

Taking two cuts at pain

Simon Beggs1 & Michael W Salter1

  1. Simon Beggs and Michael W. Salter are in the Program in Neurosciences & Mental Health, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X8, Canada. e-mail: simon.beggs@utoronto.ca e-mail: mike.salter@utoronto.ca


Matrix metalloproteases (MMPs) are shedding their traditional roles in tissue remodeling and appearing as players in diseases of the nervous system. MMP2 and MMP9 provide the latest example, with converging roles in chronic pain after peripheral nerve injury (pages 331–336).


Chronic neuropathic pain is often stubbornly resistant to analgesics and persists long after the initial injury has healed1. Although it is clear that neuropathic pain has a central component, the complex interplay between the disparate cellular subpopulations of the central nervous system (CNS) has only recently emerged2, 3.

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