Sourcing Painkillers from Scorpions ’ Stings | The Scientist Magazine
Studying scorpions comes with its share of danger, as biologist Bryan Fry of the University of Queensland knows all too well. On a 2009 trip to the Brazilian Amazon, Fry was stung while trying to collect the lethal Brazilian yellow scorpion (Tityus serrulatus), and for eight hours he says it felt as though his finger was in a candle flame. Meanwhile, his heart flipped between racing and stopping for up to five seconds at a time."At least the insane levels of pain helped keep my mind off my failing heart," Fry writes in an email to The Scientist.More ...https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/51210/...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 24, 2018 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
Scientists Just Solved a Major Piece of the Opioid Puzzle | WIRED
When it comes to tackling the opioid crisis, public health workers start with the drugs: fentanyl, morphine, heroin. But biochemists have a different focus: Not the opioids, but opioid receptors —the proteins the drugs latch onto within the body.These receptors embed themselves in the walls of cells throughout the brain and peripheral nervous system. There, they serve as cellular gatekeepers, unlocking not just the painkilling properties for which opioids are prized, but the severe, addictive, and often lethal side effects that, in 2016, contributed to the deaths of more than 50,000 people in the US.But it doesn't ha...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 22, 2018 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
The Quest for Safer Opioid Drugs | The Scientist Magazine
Opioid drugs are well-established double-edged swords. Extremely effective at analgesia, they cause an array of harmful side effects throughout the body, including itching, constipation, and respiratory depression —the slowed breathing that ultimately causes death in overdose cases. What's more, the body's interaction with opioids is dynamic: our receptors for these compounds become desensitized to the drugs' activity over time, requiring ever larger doses to suppress pain and eventually provoking severe dependence and protracted withdrawal.In the past few years, these side effects have plagued growing number...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 22, 2018 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
Her Chronic Pain Was a Medical Mystery. Was It an Unexplained Condition? - The Daily Beast
Leslie Levine's searing pains started the day after Thanksgiving in 2006. They began in her toes, which turned strangely dark. Then the agony crept upward."It felt like my legs were being dipped in boiling oil 24/7," she said.The emergency room and a series of doctors could do little but scratch their heads and offer her painkillers."I was living on oxycodone and very grateful for it," Levine said, then Harvard University's chief patent attorney. But it wasn't enough."By January, I was on disability, because I was in such pain and could hardly walk."Her internet search for answers ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - December 7, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
What We Lose When We Undertreat Pain | Kate Nicholson | TEDxBoulder - YouTube
Kate Nicholson was working as a civil rights attorney for the Justice Department when a surgical error left her unable to sit or stand, largely bedridden, and in severe pain for almost 20 years. Using opioids as an appropriate pain management tool, she continued to function as a high-level federal prosecutor. In this talk, Kate pivots from her inspiring and excruciating story to examine the under-treatment of pain, showing how our approach to opioid abuse by 2.5 million Americans is hurting 50 million people in severe or persistent pain.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4vHSLeTe-s (Source: Psychology of Pain)
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 29, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
Opioid crisis: Could the'pain-o-meter' be a solution? - USA Today
Every year, millions of Americans will go to their doctors complaining of pain, and their doctors will ask them to rate their degree of discomfort on a zero-to-10 scale, or using a range of smiley-face symbols.The doctor will have to take their word for it. And then, all too often, the doctor will prescribe a powerful and addictive opioid painkiller.It's a longstanding — if imprecise and subjective — way of measuring and treating pain. And it's at least partly responsible for starting an opioid addiction crisis that killed 64,000 people last year."One of the things we heard from many physicians is that the...
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 23, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
The Power of the Placebo - Slate
Every so often, a new study comes along that challenges conventional wisdom in medicine or science. When the conditions are right, these studies can generate a lot of attention in both the popular press and the medical community. In early November, one of these such studies, called the ORBITA study, was published in the Lancet by a group of cardiologists.The authors had set out to ask and answer a simple question: Does placement of a small wire mesh (called a stent) inside the artery that feeds blood to the heart (the coronary artery) relieve chest pain? One might ask what was novel about this question. The truth is that t...
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 21, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
New painkillers could thwart opioids ’ fatal flaw | Science | AAAS
When people die from overdoses of opioids, whether prescription pain medications or street drugs, it is the suppression of breathing that almost always kills them. The drugs act on neuronal receptors to dull pain, but those in the brain stem also control breathing. When activated, they can signal respiration to slow, and then stop. The results are well-known: an epidemic of deaths —about 64,000 people in the United States alone last year.Countering this lethal side effect without losing opioids' potent pain relief is a challenge that has enticed drug developers for years. Now, for the first time, the U.S. Food and Dr...
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 17, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
Drugstore pain pills as effective as opioids in ER patients - AP
Emergency rooms are where many patients are first introduced to powerful opioid painkillers, but what if doctors offered over-the-counter pills instead? A new study tested that approach on patients with broken bones and sprains and found pain relievers sold as Tylenol and Motrin worked as well as opioids at reducing severe pain.The results challenge common ER practice for treating short-term, severe pain and could prompt changes that would help prevent new patients from becoming addicted.The study has limitations: It only looked at short-term pain relief in the emergency room and researchers didn't evaluate how patient...
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 7, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
Why opioids are such an American problem - BBC News
For every one million Americans, almost 50,000 doses of opioids are taken every day. That's four times the rate in the UK.There are often good reasons for taking opioids. Cancer patients use them for pain relief, as do patients recovering from surgery (codeine and morphine are opioids, for example).But take too many and you have a problem. And America certainly has a problem.More ...http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41701718 (Source: Psychology of Pain)
Source: Psychology of Pain - October 29, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
Federal Pain Research Strategy Overview | Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee
The NIH Office of Pain Policy is pleased to announce the release of the Federal Pain Research Strategy.The Federal Pain Research Strategy (FPRS) is an effort of the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (IPRCC) and the National Institutes of Health, Office of Pain Policy to oversee development of a long-term strategic plan to advance the federal pain research agenda. The strategy is relevant to the missions all federal agencies and departments that support pain research. The research priorities of the FPRS are intended to guide strategic research planning and to support funding decisions that will fill cruc...
Source: Psychology of Pain - October 21, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
Interagency Pain Research Portfolio -The Federal Government's Pain Research Database
The Interagency Pain Research Portfolio database provides information on pain research and training activities supported by the Federal Government. The participating agencies – AHRQ, CDC, DoD, FDA, NIH, and VA – are represented on the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (IPRCC), a Federal advisory committee to enhance pain research efforts and promote collaboration across the government.https://paindatabase.nih.gov/ (Source: Psychology of Pain)
Source: Psychology of Pain - October 21, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
The Latest Jaw-Dropping Numbers From the Opioid Crisis – Mother Jones
About 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year —a staggering 21 percent increase from the 52,404 in 2015—according to the first government estimate of drug deaths in 2016. Overdoses now kill more Americans than HIV did at its peak in 1995, and far more than guns or cars do today.The numbers, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are provisional and will be updated monthly, according to the agency.Fueling the rise in deaths is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more potent than morphine, and fentanyl analogs, or slight tweaks on the fentanyl molecule. This has not always been t...
Source: Psychology of Pain - September 26, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
Giving Migraine Treatments the Best Chance - The New York Times
If you've never had a migraine, I have two things to say to you:1) You're damn lucky.2) You can't begin to imagine how awful they are.I had migraines – three times a month, each lasting three days — starting from age 11 and finally ending at menopause.Although my migraines were not nearly as bad as those that afflict many other people, they took a toll on my work, family life and recreation. Atypically, they were not accompanied by nausea or neck pain, nor did I always have to retreat to a dark, soundless room and lie motionless until they abated. But they were not just"bad headaches" — the pain...
Source: Psychology of Pain - September 25, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
The Cost of the Opioid Crisis | The New Yorker
In September, 2016, Donald Trump delivered a speech at the Economic Club of New York."Today, I'm going to outline a plan for American economic revival," he said."It is a bold, ambitious, forward-looking plan to massively increase jobs, wages, incomes, and opportunities for the people of our country." He went on to talk about lowering taxes and removing regulations, renegotiating trade deals and building a border wall. But he overlooked one of the most pressing issues facing the American economy today: the opioid crisis.Politicians tend to talk about the crisis in moral terms, focussing on the ways i...
Source: Psychology of Pain - September 24, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
