Joan Kendig
Academic Appointments
- Emeritus Faculty, Acad Council, Anesthesia
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- Academic Offices
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Scientific Focus
Current Research Interests
My laboratory tries to find out how pharmacologic agents used in the practice of anesthesia (general anesthetic and analgesic agents) lead to therapeutically desireable endpoints including unconsciousness, immobility and absence of pain. The old idea that general anesthetics are uniformly non-specific "membrane stabilizers" has given way to the realization that these agents exert specific actions on particular ion channels and intracellular signalling systems. Currently we are identifying anesthetic effects on ligand-gated and second messenger-operated ion channels in mammalian neurons, using both receptor-specific evoked potentials from isolated superfused spinal cord and whole cell patch clamp of neurons in situ in spinal cord slices. The goal of the research program is to construct a manageable set of actions which alone or in combination are both necessary and sufficient to bring about an anesthetic state. Most recently we have focused attention on mechanisms of spinal sensitization that contribute to chronic pain following injury and also to the development of tolerance to anesthetic and analgesic agents. We have described and partially characterized long term potentiation (LTP) in isolated spinal cord. We have also discovered long-lasting increases in spinal cord excitability following exposure to opioids such as morphine and to ethanol; these changes may be related to mechanisms of tolerance, dependence, and withdrawal.
Publications
- Hyperresponsiveness on washout of volatile anesthetics from isolated spinal cord compared to withdrawal from ethanol. Anesth Analg. 2005; (2): 413-36
- Protein kinase Cgamma mediates ethanol withdrawal hyper-responsiveness of NMDA receptor currents in spinal cord motor neurons. Br J Pharmacol. 2005; (3): 301-7
- Acute and chronic ethanol does not affect incisional pain in neonatal rats. Neurosci Lett. 2004; (3): 332-5
- Acute and chronic ethanol exacerbates formalin pain in neonatal rats. Neurosci Lett. 2004; (1): 29-33
- Exaggerated nociceptive responses on morphine withdrawal: roles of protein kinase C epsilon and gamma. Pain. 2004; (1-2): 281-9
- Inhibition of spinal protein kinase C-epsilon or -gamma isozymes does not affect halothane minimum alveolar anesthetic concentration in rats. Anesth Analg. 2004; (1): 82-4
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