西安交通大学航天学院研究论文“Fluid Mechanics in Dentinal Microtubules Provides Mechanistic Insights into the Difference between Hot and Cold Dental Pain”在国际著名学术刊物《公共科学图书馆—综合》（PLoS ONE）上发表。

该论文是航天学院生物医学工程与生物力学研究中心博士生林敏，在导师卢天健教授和哈佛大学医学院徐峰博士共同指导下，与能动学院白博峰教授合作完成，被PLoS ONE主编确认为不需要外审就可接收的论文。该项研究得到了国家杰出青年科学基金及国家外专局/教育部学科创新引智计划项目的共同资助。

冷刺激能快速诱发短暂的牙痛感（锐痛），而热刺激则需要延迟一段时间才能产生持久的疼痛感（钝痛），这一现象众所周知，但背后的隐藏的机理却始终是个迷。学术界至今无法对冷热刺激引起的牙疼痛机理作出令人满意的定量或是定性解释。该篇论文作者针对这一难题，提出了交叉学科的研究方法，利用生物微流体力学模型模拟冷热刺激下牙本质微管内体液的定向流动对牙髓神经末梢的剪切力，并提出修正的Hodgkin-Huxley神经动力学模型，模拟在剪切力作用下，位于神经末梢伤害性感受器上机械敏感性离子通道的开放特性以及神经元放电信号，并与已有的实验结果相吻合。该研究在国际上首次揭示了牙齿冷热疼痛的区别机制，并给出了定量化研究，提出的模型可以预测伤害性刺激引起牙痛强度，并据此来评价、优化口腔临床诊疗方法，为临床口腔镇痛治疗提供了理论支持。

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推荐原文出处：

PLoS ONE 6(3): e18068. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018068

Fluid Mechanics in Dentinal Microtubules Provides Mechanistic Insights into the Difference between Hot and Cold Dental Pain

Min Lin1, Zheng Yuan Luo2, Bo Feng Bai2, Feng Xu1,3*, Tian Jian Lu1*

1 School of Aerospace, Biomedical Engineering and Biomechanics Center, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China, 2 State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China, 3 Department of Medicine, HST-Center for Biomedical Engineering, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Dental thermal pain is a significant health problem in daily life and dentistry. There is a long-standing question regarding the phenomenon that cold stimulation evokes sharper and more shooting pain sensations than hot stimulation. This phenomenon, however, outlives the well-known hydrodynamic theory used to explain dental thermal pain mechanism. Here, we present a mathematical model based on the hypothesis that hot or cold stimulation-induced different directions of dentinal fluid flow and the corresponding odontoblast movements in dentinal microtubules contribute to different dental pain responses. We coupled a computational fluid dynamics model, describing the fluid mechanics in dentinal microtubules, with a modified Hodgkin-Huxley model, describing the discharge behavior of intradental neuron. The simulated results agreed well with existing experimental measurements. We thence demonstrated theoretically that intradental mechano-sensitive nociceptors are not “equally sensitive” to inward (into the pulp) and outward (away from the pulp) fluid flows, providing mechanistic insights into the difference between hot and cold dental pain. The model developed here could enable better diagnosis in endodontics which requires an understanding of pulpal histology, neurology and physiology, as well as their dynamic response to the thermal stimulation used in dental practices.

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