Minocycline as a promising therapeutic strategy for chronic pain

Chronic pain remains to be a clinical challenge due to insufficient therapeutic strategies. Minocycline is a member of the tetracycline class of antibiotics, which has been used in clinic for decades. It is frequently reported that minocycline may has many non-antibiotic properties, among which is its anti-nociceptive effect. The results from our lab and others suggest that minocycline exerts strong analgesic effect in animal models of chronic pain including visceral pain, chemotherapy-induced periphery neuropathy, periphery injury induced neuropathic pain, diabetic neuropathic pain, spinal cord injury, inflammatory pain and bone cancer pain. In this review, we summarize the mechanisms underlying the analgesic effect of minocycline in preclinical studies. Due to a good safety record when used chronically, minocycline may become a promising therapeutic strategy for chronic pain in clinic.