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Human Labor Pain Is Influenced by the Voltage-Gated Potassium Channel KV6.4 Subunit.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Lee, Michael C 
Nahorski, Michael S 
Hockley, James RF 
Lu, Van B 
Ison, Gillian 

Abstract

By studying healthy women who do not request analgesia during their first delivery, we investigate genetic effects on labor pain. Such women have normal sensory and psychometric test results, except for significantly higher cuff pressure pain. We find an excess of heterozygotes carrying the rare allele of SNP rs140124801 in KCNG4. The rare variant KV6.4-Met419 has a dominant-negative effect and cannot modulate the voltage dependence of KV2.1 inactivation because it fails to traffic to the plasma membrane. In vivo, Kcng4 (KV6.4) expression occurs in 40% of retrograde-labeled mouse uterine sensory neurons, all of which express KV2.1, and over 90% express the nociceptor genes Trpv1 and Scn10a. In neurons overexpressing KV6.4-Met419, the voltage dependence of inactivation for KV2.1 is more depolarized compared with neurons overexpressing KV6.4. Finally, KV6.4-Met419-overexpressing neurons have a higher action potential threshold. We conclude that KV6.4 can influence human labor pain by modulating the excitability of uterine nociceptors.

Description

Keywords

labor pain, nociception, pain, Kv6.4, quantitative sensory testing, DRG neuron, exome sequencing, Adult, Alleles, Amino Acid Sequence, Analgesics, Animals, Base Sequence, Cell Membrane, Cognition, Cohort Studies, Emotions, Female, Ganglia, Spinal, Heterozygote, Humans, Ion Channel Gating, Labor Pain, Male, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Models, Biological, Mutation, Nociceptors, Pain Threshold, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Potassium Channels, Voltage-Gated, Pregnancy, Protein Multimerization, Protein Subunits, Sensory Receptor Cells, Shab Potassium Channels, Subcellular Fractions, Uterus

Journal Title

Cell Rep

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2211-1247
2211-1247

Volume Title

32

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/R006210/1)
Arthritis Research UK (11600/21973)
Rosetrees Trust (A1296)
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/M011194/1)
Medical Research Council (MC_UU_12012/3)
Medical Research Council (MR/J012742/1)
Medical Research Council (MC_PC_12012)
MCL, DKM, DW, and CGW acknowledge funding from Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre. MN was funded by the Wellcome Trust (200183/Z/15/Z); JH and ESS by a Rosetrees Postdoctoral Grant (A1296) and the BBSRC (BB/R006210/1); GC and ESS by Versus Arthritis Grants (RG21973); VBL and FR by the Wellcome Trust (106262/Z/14/Z and 106263/Z/14/Z) and a joint MRC programme within the Metabolic Diseases Unit (MRC_MC_UU_12012/3). EF, GI and CB were funded by the Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Centre Integrative Genomics theme and LAP by a BBSRC-funded studentship (BB/M011194/1).