Results tagged “pain” from 60 Second Science

The news on painkillers like morphine and Oxycontin just keeps getting more exciting. A new study highlighted here suggests that when pain is caused by inflammation, tolerance to opioids is less likely to develop. In a model of inflammatory pain in rats, researchers found that the same dose of morphine continued to provide consistent relief.

The rats had pain from chronic inflammation in their paws. However, when opioid receptors in the paws were blocked, tolerance did later develop, showing that inflammation itself somehow prevents the development of tolerance, at least in the peripheral nerves.

This means that patients with conditions like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer don't have to worry so much that opioid drugs will "stop working" and that they will constantly have to chase tolerance. As long as the underlying pain itself doesn't get worse, the drugs should continue to work.

Continue reading 'Opioids: No Tolerance for Inflammation!' >

Someone once called me "cute as a mole-rat," and I thanked them for the complement. Then I found out what mole-rats looked like, and I cried in the shower for a few days.

But I shouldn't have been so hasty to dismiss my homely likeness: The African naked mole-rat is immune to certain types of pain.They respond to mechanical pain like pinching, but don't respond to pain caused by capsaicin (the hot element in chili peppers), hot objects, and even burns from acid.

Thomas Park of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Gary Lewin at the Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, and their colleagues discovered that mole-rats lack substance P, a compound that transmits information relating to chronic pain in between nerve cells. The team hopes to apply this discovery in gene therapy to help humans who suffer from chronic pain.

“Instead of going to the pain region of the spinal cord as we would expect, the nerves that lead from acid and capsaicin sensors go to the touch region,” says Park. “And their nerve fibres do not respond to acid at all.”

Did you hear that? At all.

Continue reading 'Mole-rats can't feel certain types of pain, still 'pretty on the inside'' >

Research published in Current Biology suggests that one reason we don't get hooked on on our endogenous "heroin" (endorphins and enkephalins) is that these natural ligands for the opioid receptor activate what can be seen as an "on/off" switch for the system, while morphine does not.

Consequently, the scientists engineered mice in which morphine does produce this effect-- and lo and behold, the mice were able to get pain relief from morphine, but developed less tolerance and fewer symptoms of withdrawal.

Continue reading 'Another crack at non-addictive opioids? Why we don't get hooked on our own endorphins' >

Some neat new research published in PNAS (though not online yet) offers a unique way of attacking chronic pain: gene therapy via spinal tap.

Continue reading 'Insert opioid gene here' >

A study just published in the Journal of Clinical investigation suggests a novel way of reducing the tolerance that can develop when morphine is given as a treatment for pain. But will this lead to the long-awaited “non addictive” opioid or is it more complicated?

Continue reading 'Is the "non addictive" opiate finally within reach?' >