Nesia Zurek, PhD

When You Don’t Feel Pain: Why the Ability to Hurt Actually Saves Your Life

Not feeling pain might sound like a dream—especially if you live with chronic pain—but pain is one of the body’s most important protective systems. People with congenital insensitivity to pain often break bones, burn…

Epic Sunset in Playa Grande, Costa Rica. #travel #travelphotos #puravida #sunset #paradise #vacation #costarica

When Your Nerves Get Trigger-Happy: Understanding Peripheral Sensitization Lingering pain, despite healing, may stem from peripheral sensitization, where nerves become overly sensitive. This can lead to pain from stimuli that typically wouldn't hurt, known as allodynia and hyperalgesia. Strategies for relief include graded movement, stress reduction, adequate sleep, addressing fear, and certain medications, which can help recalibrate the nervous system.

When Your Nerves Get Trigger-Happy: Understanding Peripheral Sensitization

Lingering pain, despite healing, may stem from peripheral sensitization, where nerves become overly sensitive. This can lead to pain from stimuli that typically wouldn't hurt, known as allodynia and hyperalgesia. Strategies…

3 Myths About Chronic Pain and the Power of Movement Living with chronic pain can feel like walking through a maze of misinformation. Let’s clear the path by busting three common myths and showing how movement can help you reclaim your life. Myth #1: “If it hurts, you should stop moving.” Reality: Mild discomfort ≠ harm In many chronic pain conditions, peripheral sensitization occurs—your peripheral nerves become overly reactive. This means things that shouldn’t hurt (like a light breeze) can feel painful, and mildly painful things can feel severe.

3 Myths About Chronic Pain and the Power of Movement

Living with chronic pain can feel like walking through a maze of misinformation. Let’s clear the path by busting three common myths and showing how movement can help you reclaim your life. Myth #1: “If it hurts, you should stop moving.” Reality:…

“It's supernatural
Extraterrestrial
I know a bar out in Mars
Where they drivin' spaceships instead of cars” #KatyPerry #halloween

@ninaluong.bsky.social is really upping her costume game this year. And she can still work in it!

Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum

We lost an icon today! Activist, scientist, and a difficult woman! #JaneGoodall

Physiological actions of a humanized P2X4 scFv on peripheral and central neurons in male mice with neuropathic pain Neuropathic pain remains a challenging clinical condition due to its resistance to conventional analgesics. The purinergic P2X4 receptor (P2X4R), an A…

Our final contribution to this collaboration is now online. We obtained electrophysiological recordings of DRG/TG neurons and Fos+ neurons of spinal dorsal horn & vlPAG in 2 models of neuropathic pain to study the actions of a humanized P2X4R scFv #PainResearch www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Keyword: Dudes? I would love to see more non-men (including women, non-binary, intersex, etc scientists) receive the top prize.

⚡We are finally electrocuting DRG neurons in the @alleslab.bsky.social since moving to @cincychildrens.bsky.social! #PainResearch #ephys #NeuroSkyence

Congrats! I would love to talk with you one on one about what it's like to do research in Poland! Sent you a message on LinkedIn!

🧪Biomarkers in a clinical setting for Alzheimer’s! Scientific work in identifying biomarkers for all sorts of health conditions leads to faster diagnosis, informs treatment, and improves health!

🔍How do we test for biomarkers?
Usually through blood samples - looking for proteins, cytokines, or other molecules.

It's still early days in the pain field, but blood-based biomarkers may one day help personalize pain treatments.

#HealthResearch #ChronicPain

🧪Word of the Week: Biomarker
A measurable signal in the body, like a molecule in the blood, that tells us something about health, disease, or response to treatment.

For pain, biomarkers could help make the invisible visible, giving us ways to track or predict pain.

#SciComm #PainResearch

This! If you read the paper they also were able to ID potential therapeutics based on the biomarkers. Spoiler, the therapeutics were not traditional analgesics. Though something like this is years (maybe even decades) from the clinic, this is huge first step!

Next-generation precision medicine for pain - Molecular Psychiatry Molecular Psychiatry - Next-generation precision medicine for pain

A blood test for pain?

New work in Nature identifies circulating biomarkers that distinguish chronic pain states—offering a path toward objective, biologically grounded diagnostics.

#PainResearch #Neuroskyence #Biomarkers #ScienceWatch #SciComm #ScienceInTranslation #ChronicPain

Doing my best to get better at this! You will see more and more from me as I try to communicate what we do, how we do it, and what it all means! Hoping to reach not just the science folks here on BS but non-scientists as well!

3/ DRG are where sensory neurons, including nociceptors, send their signals to the spinal cord.

2/ Here is what the human spinal cord and real DRG look like in humans! Image from human donor and our journal cover in www.jpain.org/article/S152.... White arrows show the DRG, the same clusters shown in the cartoon above.

1/ Word of the Week: Dorsal Root Ganglia (DRG)

Clusters of nerve cell bodies (soma) near the spinal cord that relay sensory signals - including pain - from the body to the brain.

Curious what they look like in real human tissue? See thread below

#NeuroSkyence #PainResearch #ChronicPain #SciComm

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

One of our final papers from this collaborative effort involving collaborators at UNM, Mayo Clinic, & McGill. Here we validate a humanized scFv targeting hP2XR. Kudos to first-author @docnessmonster.bsky.social & former lab member Mark S. for making this happen! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

JCI - Cell and molecular profiles in peripheral nerves shift toward inflammatory phenotypes in diabetic peripheral neuropathy Advertisement

6 📖 Read the full study here! www.jci.org/articles/vie...

5/ 💡 Toward personalized care:

The study shows that inflammation is the earliest shift in diabetic nerve damage.

Controlling it early may prevent the cascade.

This opens a window for preventive intervention.

4/ 🧠 Why it matters:
This work reveals a progressive cascade:
🧱 Perineurial disruption →
🔥 Immune infiltration →
🧵 Fibrotic remodeling →
📉 Schwann cell loss
Each stage offers a window for intervention.

3/ 🧬 What did they find?

Inflammation dominates: IL6, IL1B, CXCL2 were upregulated in DPN nerves

Fibrosis follows: TGF-β and Tenascin signaling increased in late-stage axonal loss

Sensory nerves are hit hardest, especially the sural nerve

2/ 🔬 What did they do?
The team collected human tibial and sural nerves from patients with and without diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN).
Using bulk and spatial transcriptomics, they mapped gene activity and tracked inflammation, cell types, and axonal mRNA transport.

🧠From Lab To Life
Why do peripheral nerves suffer axonal loss in diabetes?

A study led by @dianatavf.bsky.social from the @tedpricethepainguy.bsky.social lab showed how inflammation leads to neural fibrosis in diabetic peripheral neuropathy! #PainResearch #Neuroskyence #FromLabToLife 1/

📸 Big day in the lab!
Our new electrophysiology rig is officially up and running — huge thanks to everyone who helped make this happen. Excited for the science ahead! 🧠⚡️
@alleslab.bsky.social @cincychildrens.bsky.social #PainResearch

This work is finally online as in-press preview!

JCI - Cell and molecular profiles in peripheral nerves shift toward inflammatory phenotypes in diabetic peripheral neuropathy www.jci.org/articles/vie...