School of Medicine
Showing 11-20 of 28 Results
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QiLiang “Q” Chen
Instructor, Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research focuses on understanding the plasticity in pain-modulating circuits in pathological pain states. I started with defining a basic functional framework that links the pain-transmission system to the pain-modulation system, through which I explored the central mechanism of sensitization in chronic pain after a peripheral injury. Based on this fundamental observation, my work now focuses on investigating the pathophysiology and the role of endogenous opioids in chronic pain related to brain injury and other forms of trauma, a topic especially relevant to chronic post-traumatic pain sufferers. Clinically, I am exploring the use of advance image-guidance in pain interventions for treating complex headache and craniofacial pain. Ultimately, I hope to translate these fundamental knowledge and technologies to patient care and provide potential new therapeutic targets to help those with pain after head injury and polytrauma.
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Lawrence Chu, MD, MS
Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI have two lines of research, one involving educational informatics and use of technology in postgraduate medical education and another involving NIH-funded work in patient-oriented clinical research regarding opioid use and physiologic responses associated with acute and chronic exposure in humans.
For a full description of my educational informatics work, please see my website aim.stanford.edu.
My clinical research focuses on the study opiate-induced hyperalgesia in patients suffering from chronic pain.
I am currently conducting an NIH-funded five year double-blinded randomized controlled clinical study (NIGMS award 1K23GM071400-01) that prospectively examines the following hypotheses: 1) pain patients on chronic opioid therapy develop dose-dependent tolerance and/or hyperalgesia to these medications over time, 2) opiate-induced tolerance and hyperalgesia develop differently with respect to various types of pain, 3) opioid-induced hyperalgesia occurs independently of withdrawal phenomena, and 4) opiate-induced tolerance and hyperalgesia develop differently based on gender and/or ethnicity.
The study is the first quantitative and prospective examination of tolerance and hyperalgesia in pain patients and may have important implications for the rational use of opioids in the treatment of chronic pain.