Scientists Find New Painkiller From Saliva

dptalia writes "Scientists have found a new pain killer based on human saliva. Apparently 1 gram of the new drug provides as much pain blocking as 3 grams of morphine. The drug blocks the breakdown of the body's natural pain killing mechanism. Scientists say the molecule is simple and synthesis is expected to be simple."

Comments

Make it stop!

[LiquidCoooled]

When the researchers injected a pain-inducing chemical into rats' paws, 1 gram of opiorphin per kilogram of body weight achieved the same painkilling effect as 3 grams of morphine.

Well wouldn't you say anything to make them stop spitting on you?

"No more, yes alright it works I'm not in pain anymore."

Moving out of cuckoo land, I have a twisted ankle after a fall yesterday should I hock a loogie onto it?

Re:Make it stop!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, but morphine is hardly for ankle twisting pain.

I've been on several pain management clinics/programs - the last one being pretty much on the cutting edge of medical stuff (lots of experts trained in new stuff who travel worldwide for conferences about pain management and all). I've been taking morphine several times a day for a few years for chronic pain. It sucks. The side effects suck. But it's the only thing that's given me anything close to a "quality of life".

If it helps to put things in perspective, in the last group (about 20 ppl), when asked if we had honestly thought about ending our lives to make the pain stop, nobody's answered no. Being in excruciating pain each and every second of your life is very hard. You don't get a break when you can't handle it anymore. It's almost like being tortured, and it never ever stops, until the day you die.

It's a very hard thing to live. Hard to get or keep a job too, when almost half the time you're either in too much pain to be useful for anything or taken too much morphine that you're not "all there" anymore. You can't drive when you're taking the stuff either. Half the docs out there see you as an addict or something. And there's the complications and side effects. And when things happen like you catch a cold or gastro and you vomit, then you can't keep down your morphine either, then things start to go REALLY bad. You gotta to to the hospital, and it's not like they'll just give you a shot no questions asked. Your self-esteem is at an all-time low (no work, feeling worthless and a burden, etc). You can't sleep right. It sucks. Your life sucks. If I didn't have kids to look after, I'd likely have committed suicide a couple years ago just to end the pain.

Any new pain management method is a godsend. If I could, I'd volunteer to test this stuff for free (worst case scenario, I die, and the pain ends with it).

That's the daily reality of someone dealing with chronic pain. Morphine isn't just something for addicts and getting high. It makes the lives of millions bearable and worth living. And it's not just for old folks with cancer either - I just turned 30 last month.

Re:Make it stop!

[jimbojw]

Apparently kissing does make it better.

Saliva?

[onion2k]

Saliva is a painkiller? How come I have toothache then?

Going back to the old days?

[malkavian]

So, the behaviour observed in animals where they lick wounds, and even in humans, that 'kiss it better' (introduce saliva to the wound), or suck on a sore wound to make it feel better, by instinct, hasn't given the clue that there's something in saliva that helps?
There's a whole store of herb and animal lore that's been systematically quashed for decades (well, since the great witch hunts really), and science is only just getting round to looking at it now.
There's a lot to be said for 'complimentary' medicine for lesser ailments (although the modern pharmaceutical treatments are definitely magnitudes more effective for front line serious treatment). Rather than just decrying it, perhaps it should be investigated more thoroughly?

Re:Going back to the old days?

[lachlan76]

Actually, I believe that the instinct to lick a wound is because saliva contains Lysozyme, which makes it easier for white blood cells to engulf a bacterium. Its presence in tears is one of the reasons that you cry when you get something in your eyes.

Re:Going back to the old days?

[value_added]

So, the behaviour observed in animals where they lick wounds, and even in humans, that 'kiss it better' (introduce saliva to the wound), or suck on a sore wound to make it feel better, by instinct, hasn't given the clue that there's something in saliva that helps?

I've been moaning about that for years, and without exception, every pet owner and every vet considered me nuts. I noticed that if you lay a plate of food on the ground and have a dog lick it clean, a thin clear coating builds up on the surface of the plate. Give it a day or two, and washing the plate hot soapy water doesn't remove the coating as you'd think it would.

Mind you I don't know what's in saliva, and as this article suggests, few have stopped to consider the subject long enough to study it. What I do know is that the standard procedure of treating a dog for an injury or skin problem involves topical antiobiotics in combination with a cone that's placed over the dog's head (if a dog has any self respect, it's lost in minutes after the cone goes on). Licking, according to established wisdom, defeats the purpose, infects the wound or injury, saliva is full of germs, blah blah blah. Dogs have been around longer than veterinary medicine, and I doubt there's many wild animals that have membership in an HMO. Put another way, they've been doing fine for longer than we know. And for reasons we can only hope to discover. I let my own dogs lick any itches or wounds they have, and have yet to find something that hasn't healed as it should. I can't say the same for pets of relatives and friends who went the cone-head route.

I could add something on how oral sex relates to the topic at hand, but instead I'll continue with Stuff I Learned About Dogs that similarly runs contrary to a veterinary advice, established wisdom, or published literature. I expect Science will catch up to this, as it will in other areas.

1. Dogs don't need a lot of water. Unless you feed them a steady diet of dried corn meal packaged up as dog food.

2. Dogs don't need or want a steady diet, and feeding your dog "table scraps" (aka "real food") doesn't cause upset and diarrhea. By comparison, if you eat nothing but Corn Flakes every day for 10 years, chances are an ordinary hamburger will cause problems.

3. Dogs are creatures of habit, but seek out a change in regimen when possible. Don't feed your dog in a bowl. Hide the food around the house and make them search for it. Great fun. Even better, roll some soft-boiled eggs across the kitchen floor and let them catch their food. The expression on their face after that first bite is priceless.

4. If given the opportunity, dogs will discover they enjoy fruits and many vegetables (green leafy stuff being the exception, and apples and tomatoes perennial favourites). The best food for dogs is pizza. Yeah, pizza. Pizza has lots of fat (more important than protein for any active dog), it's chewy (all dogs like to chew), and if there's lots of toppings, the scavenger instinct is satisfied. Best served warm, of course.

Obviously, I have way too much free time on my hands. Maybe I can become a scientist.

Re:Those poor rats

[jez9999]

The rats? What about those poor bacteria in the saliva, just being sacrificed so the scientists could make the painkiller? There were probably more bacteria in there, eradicated, than there were humans that ever lived!

Re:Those poor rats

[MightyYar]

I hate rats. I'll buy a product based on how many more rats they killed during testing then the nearest competitor.

Next up, little rat-like dogs. Can we require medical testing on those?

I'm completely against animal testing on cute little fuzzy bunnies and cool dogs, like golden retrievers. I'm against testing on some monkeys, but others you can go for it - like that little brown bastard that threw feces on me at the zoo. Give him monkey-AIDS.

Also, I never buy bug repellent that has been tested on mosquitoes. The slaughter must stop!

3 grams of morphine? (!)

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand they might be comparing relative potency, but comparing to THREE GRAMS of morphine is kinda excessive.

300 mg morphine will render just about any human being unconscious and apnoeic pretty quickly.

3000 mg will knock you out cold, stop you breathing, and drop your blood pressure precipitously, more or less instantaneously.

In which sense, numerous things have have the same pain-killing effect as three grams of morphine.

Being hit by a freight train, for instance.

Re:3 grams of morphine? (!)

[Nakoruru]

Yes, but the dosage of freight train required is a lot bigger.

Re:Indeed

[Ginger Unicorn]

i think its not so black and white. if you were about to die of cancer and some scientists said they could synthesise a cure by torturing a cage full of rabbits would you want them to? Even though its a horrible choice i cant see that i would choose to die.

on the other hand, testing something so trivial as make up on an animal doesnt have any ethical justification that i can discern. then there's the sliding scale in between.

Re:Indeed

[indifferent children]

such horror and cruelty

I have a friend who is a neuro-oncology researcher. A very large part of her job is: causing cancer in rats, killing those rats, and sectioning their brains. Horror may be in the eye of the beholder, but she does not practice cruelty. The rats are killed by being placed into a box with CO2 (from a dry-ice chamber). That's probably a more peaceful death than I can expect.

Granted, when you are researching pain meds, there's probably going to be pain involved. But that doesn't mean than the researchers get any pleasure out of causing this pain, or that they cause any more pain than necessary.

If you truly feel that a rat life is worth as much as a human life, or that an hour of rat pain is as bad as an hour of human pain, then it is hard to justify your continued existence. Even if you are as green as you can get, and a hard-core vegan, your ecological footprint is very large (certainly compared to a rat), and responsible for the deaths of many small animals. The fact that you use a computer means that your carbon footprint is not that of a primitive hunter-gatherer. If you eat vegetables and/or grains, you are responsible for the deaths of several small mammals (such as fieldmice) and thousands of insects every week, just from the mechanical harvesting process (even assuming that your food is 'organic' and thus pesticide-free.

Re:Indeed

[mutube]

Very true. Relevant bit from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2 for info.

Bicarbonate ions are crucial for regulating blood pH. As breathing rate influences the level of CO2 in blood, too slow or shallow breathing causes respiratory acidosis, while too rapid breathing, hyperventilation, leads to respiratory alkalosis.

It is interesting to note that although it is oxygen that the body requires for metabolism, it is not low oxygen levels that stimulate breathing, but is instead higher carbon dioxide levels. As a result, breathing low-pressure air or a gas mixture with no oxygen at all (e.g., pure nitrogen) leads to loss of consciousness without subjective breathing problems. This is especially perilous for high-altitude fighter pilots, and is also the reason why the instructions in commercial airplanes for case of loss of cabin pressure stress that one should apply the oxygen mask to oneself before helping others--otherwise one risks going unconscious without being aware of the imminent peril.

If you're going to kill through suffocation, there are few more cruel ways than using CO2.

YES!

[Greyfox]

And here I thought no one understood the plight of the poor malaria mosquito! These once proud creatures roamed the plains by the billions and now due to human eradication programs and bats they're down to mere hundreds of millions! If this continues we could see the end of the malaria mosquito in our great-great-great-great-great grandchildren's time! We owe it to them to preserve this awesome predator! Look at all the contributions the malaria mosquito has brought to us! Without the malaria mosquito we wouldn't have gin and tonic! Without the malaria mosquito the colonial British would have had literally no opposition to taking over the world! We must all do our part to save the malaria mosquito!

As for the small rat-like dogs, I'm afraid they're pretty much worthless even for cruel and inhumane experiments. However, you can still feed them to coyotes. Coyotes are cool dogs like golden retrievers and they eat small rat-like dogs! They go through poodles like I go through popcorn. Yay coyotes! Alligators are no good though. Sure they eat small rat-like dogs and the occasional resident from Florida but they're cold blooded and you know they're trying to bring back the dominance of the dinosaur. I suggest we genetically engineer crocodiles to have warm blood and fur. That'd show them!

Re:YES!

[Gordonjcp]

I suggest we genetically engineer crocodiles to have warm blood and fur. That'd show them!

That would be a cat, then.

Re:No, really, an important point

[wobblie]

THC has little to no addictive qualities. It is perverse how something one could grow in ones backyard, for free, is of the highest criminality, yet somehow we feel a need to come up with something else - usually not as good - that requires an entire industrial infrastructure. While it is not hard to understand the reasons for this sad state of affairs, it is still ... sad.

Re:Indeed

[Glyphn]

The rats are killed by being placed into a box with CO2 (from a dry-ice chamber). That's probably a more peaceful death than I can expect.

Aside: I'm not against animal research, but as a former animal researcher who euthanized rodents I have to say that this is a rotten way to kill animals. CO2 euthanasia is not quick, the animals are clearly in distress (they die gasping for air, clawing at the container edges, rolling in their urine and feces). I can only imagine that CO2 has become popular because it sounds nice--you know, you put the animals to sleep with some gas that they breath all the time anyway.

Better by far is cervical dislocation--a quick snap of the neck and the animal falls senseless. Unfortunately, that practice is increasingly viewed as barbaric and is discouraged in many places. It's a strange world we live in where we care less about the actual suffering of the animal than how humane we appear to be.