In this paper we compared functionality of rat and human descending brain inhibitory systems.

Diffuse Noxious Inhibitory Controls (DNIC) describes the phenomenon whereby application of noxious stimuli to one part of the body inhibits pain perception from another remote body region through descending systems, and condition pain modulation (CPM) is the presumed analogous process in humans.

The present study provides novel evidence that a comparable noxious cuff pressure paradigm activates this unique form of endogenous inhibitory control in healthy rat and man. This has important implications for the forward translation of bench and experimental pain research findings to the clinical domain. If translatable mechanisms underlying dysfunctional endogenous inhibitory descending pathway expression (previously evidenced in painful states in rat and man) were revealed using cuff pressure algometry, the identification of new analgesic targets could be expedited.