A Potentially Important Advance in the Control of Pain

Some rare few individuals do not feel pain, and are consequently a danger to themselves, often dying young. Unfortunately little headway has been made in manipulating the mechanisms thought to cause this condition, not just as a matter of treatment, but also as a way to create much safer and more sophisticated methods to temporarily switch off pain in the rest of us. Now, researchers have succeeded in reversing painlessness in an afflicted individual, better characterized the central mechanism of this condition, and this should directly result in a new methodology for efficient pain suppression. While this research is not directly relevant to aging, pain is an important consideration everywhere in medicine, especially in chronic disease, and this has the look of a profound step forward: People born with a rare genetic mutation are unable to feel pain, but previous attempts to recreate this effect with drugs have had surprisingly little success. Using mice modified to carry the same mutation, researchers have now discovered the recipe for painlessness. 'Channels' that allow messages to pass along nerve cell membranes are vital for electrical signalling in the nervous system. In 2006, it was shown that sodium channel Nav1.7 is particularly important for signalling in pain pathways and people born with non-functioning Nav1.7 do not feel pain. Drugs that block Nav1.7 have since been developed but they had disappointingly weak effects. The new study reveals that mice and people ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs