Researchers Are Developing Cure for Human Pain (neurosciencenews.com)

transporter_ii writes: Scientists from University College London seem to have come up with a two-pronged treatment regimen they believe would help patients suffering from chronic pain. And in a strange irony, they did it by making it possible for mice – and one human – to feel pain when they previously couldn't. From the story: "To examine if opioids were important for painlessness, the researchers gave naloxone, an opioid blocker, to mice lacking Nav1.7 and found that they became able to feel pain. They then gave naloxone to a 39-year-old woman with the rare mutation and she felt pain for the first time in her life. 'After a decade of rather disappointing drug trials, we now have confirmation that Nav1.7 really is a key element in human pain,' says senior author Professor John Wood (UCL Medicine). 'The secret ingredient turned out to be good old-fashioned opioid peptides, and we have now filed a patent for combining low dose opioids with Nav1.7 blockers. This should replicate the painlessness experienced by people with rare mutations, and we have already successfully tested this approach in unmodified mice.'"

Comments

The world is crying out for better pain killers

[PeterM from Berkeley]

That's why this story is so cool.

There's a good reason why doctors are hostile to analgesics. They can cause damage that lasts far longer than the acute pain, and can cause effects in the long term that are worse than the chronic pain, in many cases.

For many cases of chronic pain, the relatively harmless stuff like NSAIDs, aspirin, and acetaminophen don't really work well enough, and in high doses all of these are toxic. So out come the opiates, however, opiates quickly induce tolerance so larger and larger doses are required. And the tolerance becomes addiction, and the brain starts getting re-wired. Not to mention the side effects of opiates, which aren't all that nice either.

It can take *years* for a brain re-wired by long term use of opiates can return to "sort of" normal, if ever. And the return to normal has nasty psychological effects, such as depression, OCD-like symptoms, suicidal tendencies, and an inability to be happy or experience joy.

It's much more than "moral panic" over opiates. The drugs are frankly dangerous, and even with the very best management practices, they will spin out of control if a person is on them too long.

I'd only want to be on large amounts of opiates if I were terminally ill.

Re:The world is crying out for better pain killers

[fafalone]

There's a good reason why doctors are hostile to analgesics.

They're scared of the DEA if they prescribe opiates in a way that offends the local field office.

So out come the opiates, however, opiates quickly induce tolerance so larger and larger doses are required.

So? Medical literature shows no additional side effects from even extreme doses (some non-terminal chronic pain sufferers even take 800+mg/day of oxycodone without issue)

And the tolerance becomes addiction, and the brain starts getting re-wired.

Despite the anecdotes, there's no medical evidence this happens anything more than a tiny minority of the time in patients who aren't already drug abusers. Dependence is not the same as addiction.

Not to mention the side effects of opiates, which aren't all that nice either.

Constipation, tiny bit of immune suppression rarely clinically significant, and...? Do you mean the effect of non-prescribed opiates due to prohibition rather than the substances themselves? People with tolerance to opiates aren't impaired and nodding out if they're being properly managed.

It can take *years* for a brain re-wired by long term use of opiates can return to "sort of" normal, if ever.

Among addicts with the medically distinct condition of addiction. As mentioned, a very small minority of those treated with opioids. And the statement should be more like a 1-3 months to 'sort of' normal, and 'if ever' for 'totally normal'.

It's much more than "moral panic" over opiates. The drugs are frankly dangerous, and even with the very best management practices, they will spin out of control if a person is on them too long.

It actually is moral panic. Medically speaking, opiates are far safer than the vast majority of prescription drugs. You sound like all your knowledge of opioid treatment comes exclusively from anti-drug propaganda sources. It sure as hell didn't come from the medical community.

I'd only want to be on large amounts of opiates if I were terminally ill.

Well you're into that whole drug war propaganda thing where you believe everyone prescribed some Vicodin for a toothache is shooting up heroin with dirty needles while homeless in an alley a few months later. So if you want to suffer, go for it. But respect the rights of others to not want to suffer because of opioid hysteria like you're spreading. And even if you want to go on believing that hysteria, I hope we can at least agree that the DEA shouldn't be setting treatment guidelines like it is now, and it should be left up to the patient and their doctor. (if you're getting massively overprescribed by a pill mill, it's a situation you've gone out of your way to get to)

Re:Cure for symptoms

[American AC in Paris]

Pain is a warning that something is wrong and is harming you. You don't want the warning to go away... you want the problem that's causing the warning to be solved.

That's not really what chronic pain is, though. Yes, pain is a warning, and an important one for most situations. When the system designed to regulate and deliver pain is broken, though, you get chronic pain. You feel pain regardless of whether or not there's actual harm being done. It's like trying to live in a house where the fire alarm is always going off.

My wife has PMPS. When her surgery was performed, a number of nerve endings deep in her chest cavity were damaged; they can't grow back, and they're constantly firing alarms at every slightest thing. For her, riding in a car hurts when the car goes over a small bump in the road. Coughing or sneezing hurts like hell. Getting hugged to hard or run into too quickly by our 6-year-old daughter hurts. Don't even think of trying to pick that kid up, either, because that'll hurt, too. My wife's low-impact elliptical workouts are an exercise in constant nerve pain, but she does them anyway to keep up her health. Pulling on a locked door handle expecting it to be open hurts. Trying to grab a pan off the top shelf hurts. Lying on her back hurts. Rolling over in bed hurts. She's lucky to get four hours of sleep on a typical day, thanks to a vicious combination of anti-cancer meds and pain. Countless little, insignificant, pedestrian things that most people wouldn't even bat an eyelid at are constant and grinding sources of pain for her.

She knows what the problem is; she's got busted nerves in her chest. You can't really fix busted nerves. Yes, there are risks to not feeling pain, but holy hell we'd take them in a heartbeat just to be able to shut this goddamned internal fire alarm off, even for a day.

There are millions of people dealing with the same kind of thing: constant, chronic pain. This would very literally change their lives.

Re:Junkies

[Some_Llama]

DEA has been cracking down on doctors prescribing drugs for the past 5 years, making it harder to get any kind of pain relief drug from your doctor, in both quantity and quality so that you end up suffering so your doctor doesn't go to jail.

I know this from personal experience but here is a simple google search that took 5 seconds.

https://www.google.com/#q=dea+...