Joint Pain

The Pressure Application Measurement (PAM) device is a novel, easy-to-use tool for measuring mechanical pain threshold in experimental joint hypersensitivity models in rodents. The PAM device has been designed and validated specifically for the mechanical stimulation and assessment of joint pain, ideal for detecting arthritis in rats and mice.

Operation

The device is a unique and specialized force sensor that is worn on the thumb of the person doing the testing. Each PAM device comes standard with two force sensors, which have been specifically designed to apply force to rat and mouse joints and pedal switch. Computer software is also included for data acquisition.

Excellent for quantifying:

Joint Sensitivity

Chronic Joint Inflammation

Arthritic Pain

Arthritis is associated with chronic, debilitating pain in the joints. Current metrics of arthritic pain are indirect, by scoring the level of motor activity or the animal’s weight distribution (Barton et al. 2007). Current indirect tests, such as the weight distribution correlate well with the level of joint pain, but such a metric is a composite picture of complex pain responses, and provides little discrete information about local stimulation and locally-evoked responses.

The quantification of localized joint hypersensitivity is common in the clinic, but not in animal experiments. In this sense, the new PAM device represents a step forward toward a multifactorial measurement of pain-related behavior in animal research.

The PAM device is the first instrument designed specifically to apply force to the joint and automatically detect the animal’s response.

Instrument Configuration

Pressure transducers: the PAM device comes with 2 different transducers. Each has been tested and validated in the mouse and rat knee joints: small transducer is flat and round (ideal for mouse knee joint), large transducer is flat and round (ideal for rat knee joint).