ABSTRACT
Pathological pain or clinical pain is caused by tissue and nerve injuries,and is usually chronic and mainly divided into inflammatory pain and neuropathic pain. Pathological pain is typically characterized by hyperalgesia (increased responsiveness to noxious stimuli) and allodynia (painful responses to normally innocuous stimuli). The MAPKs are a family of evolutionally conserved molecules that play a critical role in cell signaling,consisting of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK),p38,and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK),which play an important role in neural plasticity of pathological pain. Inhibition of MAPKs alleviates inflammatory pain and neuropathic pain in different animal models. It is very important to study the inhibition of MAPKs as a therapeutic approach to treating pathological pain. All the studies suggest that MAPKs is a promising therapeutic target for pathological pain.