The chronic pain that develops as a result of spinal cord injury (SCI) is extremely debilitating
and remains largely unmanageable by current therapeutic strategies. Voltage-gated sodium
channels regulate the biophysical properties, and thus firing characteristics, of neurons. After
SCI the repertoire of sodium channels produced by dorsal horn nociceptive neurons is
altered, enabling neurons to fire at higher than normal rates in response to unchanged
peripheral stimuli as well as to generate spontaneous discharges in the absence of stimuli …