Chronic
neuropathic pain, a type of chronic and potentially disabling
pain caused by a disease or injury of the somatosensory nervous system,
spinal cord injury, or various
chronic conditions, such as
viral infections (e.g., post-herpetic
neuralgia),
autoimmune diseases,
cancers, and metabolic disorders (e.g.,
diabetes mellitus), is one of the most intense types of
chronic pain, which incurs a major socio-economic burden and is a serious public health issue, with an estimated prevalence of 7-10% in adults throughout the world. Presently, the available drug treatments (e.g.,
anticonvulsants acting at
calcium channels,
serotonin-
noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors,
tricyclic antidepressants,
opioids, topical
lidocaine, etc.) for chronic
neuropathic pain patients are still rare and have disappointing efficacy, which makes it difficult to relieve the patients' painful symptoms, and, at best, they only try to reduce the patients' ability to tolerate
pain. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), a type of transcript of more than 200
nucleotides with no
protein-coding or limited capacity, were identified to be abnormally expressed in the spinal cord, dorsal root ganglion, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex under chronic
neuropathic pain conditions. Moreover, a rapidly growing body of data has clearly pointed out that nearly 40% of lncRNAs exist specifically in the nervous system. Hence, it was speculated that these dysregulated lncRNAs might participate in the occurrence, development, and progression of chronic
neuropathic pain. In other words, if we deeply delve into the potential roles of lncRNAs in the pathogenesis of chronic
neuropathic pain, this may open up new strategies and directions for the development of novel targeted drugs to cure this refractory disorder. In this article, we primarily review the status of chronic
neuropathic pain and provide a general overview of lncRNAs, the detailed roles of lncRNAs in the nervous system and its related diseases, and the abnormal expression of lncRNAs and their potential clinical applications in chronic
neuropathic pain. We hope that through the above description, readers can gain a better understanding of the emerging roles of lncRNAs in chronic
neuropathic pain.