Baogang Liu, M.D.
After graduated from medical school in China in 1989, I did anesthesia residency training for 4 years. During this period time, I was strongly interested in pain treatment and wanted to understand the pain mechanisms. So I studied my postgraduate study and got Ph.D degree in 1998. On 2000, I went to department of anesthesiology in University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences to study the mechanism of neuropathic pain. Using the combination of electrophysiology and calcium imaging technique, I found that cytokines, which are released from herniated disk in low back pain patients, play an important role in initiating and maintaining the neuropathic pain possibly by increase the intracellular calcium. On 2004, I moved to Winston Salem, joining Dr.Eisenach’s famous pain mechanism lab in Wake Forest University Medical Center. With strong academic atmosphere and forefront research study in the world, we have found that perineural injection of clonidine reduce the peripheral sensory neurons excitability and phosphoralation of MAPKs. Another project which I have been doing is about explanation of the mechanism of cervical ripening. By using the single fiber recording technique on teased hypogastric nerve innervating the rat cervix, we have found the estrogen could increase the spontaneous activity of single hypogastric units and sensitize the response of high threshold mechanical fibers to uterine cervix distention.
Based on clinic phenomenon that that chronic pain following delivery is much less frequent then after other physical trauma, in this project we have found that breastfeeding rats have less pain comparing with the normal rats, and Oxytocin released by the process of breastfeeding may participate in the decreased pain. Our future plan is to use the elelctrophysiological methods to explore the mechanisms underlying the decreased pain in breastfeeding rats.
I like listening to music especially famous symphony, enjoying playing basketball, tennis and swimming.