Upper Gastrointestinal Visceral Pain Models in Guinea-Pigs (Mini-Review)

Visceral pain brings deep medical burden to society, and it is clinically often the first symptom which leads to a medical consultation. In the time of deeper understanding of molecular transducers in pain pathways, there is still need for models to test hypothesis how would selective inhibition of nociceptive pathways modulates the behavior of experimental animal. In comparison with somatic pain, there is less visceral pain models, probably due to complex extrinsic (dual innervation by dorsal root ganglia and vagus nerve innervation) and intrinsic innervation. We want to develop a new model of visceral pain in guinea pigs to test our hypothesis that vagal afferent innervation affects perception of visceral pain. In this mini-review we would like to closely describe advantages and drawbacks of visceral pain models used in our department