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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.'"
Scientists from University College London seem to have come up with a two-pronged treatment regiment
Two-pronged? Sounds painful. Couldn't they have made it one-pronged, or, like, two-nubbed or something?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Ever watch a Cancer patient die?
I have. I listened to her cry, and whimper, and finally scream until she had to be sedated into unconsciousness with morphine and I mean a LOT of it.
If this just DELAYS that final dosing, it would add weeks or months of enjoyable life to those who are dying of such agony.
Patented? GOOD! Maybe this time the patent rights will be granted to competing entities, allowing for some competition.
Since these are British researchers, we can so hope, they aren't quite as corrupted as our government funded research.
Editors? We don't need no stinking editors!
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You may like to read:
Gunmen Kill 12, Wound 7 At French Magazine HQ
10 Confirmed Dead In Shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College
Jeez. If you're going to give me recommendations, could you at least not recommend stories that are two months to a year old?
Next up: Japanese Cities Destroyed by Nuclear Bombs
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
We've got a cure for pain, a cure for fever (aspirin, Ibuprofin), now all we need is a cure for tiredness.
Once we have that, doctors will have a prescription cocktail of 3 medicines that will cure almost anything!
(Your symptoms went away - what's the problem?)
The torturers will love this. Make people feel double the pain...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
in just the US. It is a major symptom that goes along mostly with about 120 million people with chronic illness. About half the adults in the US have a chronic illness.
Painkillers (NSAIDs & Aspirin) can often cause other problems, like gastrointestinal bleeding. Hence, if a new regime to control pain actually works, it might solve a number of issues in treatment of chronic illness. But it is not going to eliminate the chronic illness. In other words, stay healthy.
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.
I remember them well.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Heroin peddlers, illegal and legal alike, will shut this research down.
Actual heroin dealers are probably thrilled... less access to pills = more demand for powder, as our brilliant drug warriors recently proved by sending tens of thousands of people away from doctors and pharmacists and into the arms of heroin dealers. But better 1000 people suffer in agony than 1 person take his pills to feel good, amirite? The DEA controls how your pain is treated now, not your doctor. And their philosophy? "Not dying soon? Not screaming loud enough to give me a headache? No pain relief for you!"
As for the legal guys... pretty sure this will be something they can charge out the ass for that you'll have to take at least daily.
quote: "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."
What a heartwarming story!
Woman breaks her toe on a table leg. "AAAAH! Ngh. . . It's so. . . wonderful! Gaaah!" Cries tears of joy(?).
OK, I understand that this is a serious medical condition, not to mention a breakthrough in our understanding of the subject. No disrespect. . . But I couldn't help noticing the irony and dark humor implicit in that one sentence.
The problem is, pain is remarkably important to humans. It tells us we are too close to the fire, or our finger is broken, or someone has just plunged a knife in our back.
Sure, there are some people who are constantly in pain that this could held with, and you want some pain relief while you are healing, but even when healing, you don't want the possibility of pain gone [ie, broken arm, you get up to go to the washroom and stub your foot, breaking your toe, you want to find out right then it's broken, not later when doctor tells you to just live with it like that.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
My introduction to hypnosis was having three teeth pulled after a five minute session. No drugs. One tooth had three roots wrapped around bone. For a week I spit out bits of broken bone, but no pain, no bleeding at any time.
A skilled hypnotist can remove chronic pain in a single session. Even better, he/she can teach how you can do it yourself, if necessary for the rest of your life. Most people do well with hypnosis.
There seems to be a lot of superstition and mystery concerning hypnosis among the ignorant, especially in the medical profession. It can't do all miracles but it does some very well. If you haven't looked closely in to it you are doing yourself and your loved ones a disservice. You'll never know the myriad ways it can benefit you.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Yes...and? They're not proposing permanent treatments I don't think, just providing relief for people with unendingly painful conditions. And even if they are there's people who would certainly want to give up pain. I know someone who's largely non-functional because of chronic pain due to nerve damage. Her quality of life is terrible because of that, I'm sure it's worth the risk to her to be able to actually use both of her arms.
I'd post the whole zalgo thing if the site supported Unicode.
Are you fucking serious. Causing more pain?! I've experienced plenty, to the point where I come back around to my original decision about a decade and a half ago that suicide is preferable to the pain of circumcision, at least what happened to me. I gather circumcisions generally go well. I'm just unlucky.
(I am about to lose access to my meds, and "religious objection!" may prevent me from getting a replacement, as much as I want to cooperate with the system. How does one cooperate with a system that is designed to kill you by excruciating pain instead of the natural way? I will try.)
Except, this time, I have these words of advice:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
So here's how it is, Slashdot and Soylent. I went off on Soylent, but I guess I'm feeling green today. Dox me, geek feminism wiki. Call me a rapist. Blame me for the lack of female programmers. Just do it. Insert relevant image macro.
There is no way in hell you'd assume a vitally important feedback mechanism like pain was absent from any living organism that could benefit from it, unless you were trying to convince yourself you weren't being cruel. Furcrissake bash their brains the instant you can.
What about that?
If you can kill, or at least scale back the pain that active, epic levels of idiocy cause me, I'd wholly fund the thing tomorrow.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I believe this "cure" for pain will fail, though it may be a more effective treatment than traditional opiates if it has fewer side effects. Why will it fail? Pain consists of TWO key elements. Element 1 is the physical stimulus or nerve conduction (this is actually the least important). Element 2 is the brain's emotional response to the stimuli it received. The brain is capable is experiencing pain even when no stimulus is received from a peripheral site. Phantom limb pain in amputees definitively proves this. The brain has a "map" of the body and is capable of experiencing pain even when a body part no longer exists. Therefore, anything that blocks nerve conduction (like a sodium channel blocker) will not stop pain in all patients. I'm not trying to say this new drug target will be useless; it might be fantastic, but it will not "cure" pain by any stretch of the imagination. I'm interested to see what kind of side effects are experienced when nav1.7 is blocked in HEALTHY patients.
The hostility that too many doctors have to analgesics is maddening.
It's not that the doctors are hostile to giving adequate doses of painkillers.
It's that the DEA examines how often and how much they prescribe, and if it is too high (by their far too low scales) they come down on the doctors with penalties that are often career-ending. This puts doctors treating chronic-pain cases, or painful diseases, at substantial risk. So they underprescribe painkillers in order to avoid discovering the current administrative threshold by exceeding it.
This is particularly appalling now that it has been discovered that adequate opioid painkiller dosage in the first weeks following a traumatic injury apparently prevents post traumatic stress disorder. Perhaps the high and rising incidence of this debilitating condition in the past decades was entirely the result of the drug war.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Discovery of a selective NaV1.7 inhibitor from centipede venom with analgesic efficacy exceeding morphine in rodent pain models http://www.pnas.org/content/11...
The substance in question is , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The problem is, pain is remarkably important to humans. It tells us we are too close to the fire, or our finger is broken, or someone has just plunged a knife in our back.
or that we are using Microsoft products or that we are trying to have a conversation with Lennart Poettering
I had tried alcohol and decided that I don't like it so I don't drink it at all. I used prescription opiates and I haven't got addicted to them. A half-finished bottle of oxycodone still stands on my shelf, I'll throw it away once it expires.
He has a fantastic bit about his mother's passing. He's not everyone's cup of tea, but this one is worth a listen.
I would love to be on your side on this argument. Do you have any references for your claim of "...brilliant drug warriors recently ... sending tens of thousands of people away from doctors ... and into the arms of heroin dealers"? The implication is that you are referring to a specific incident or government decision, which I would like to know more about.
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
The problem is, pain is remarkably important to humans. It tells us we are too close to the fire, or our finger is broken, or someone has just plunged a knife in our back.
Sure, there are some people who are constantly in pain that this could held with, and you want some pain relief while you are healing, but even when healing, you don't want the possibility of pain gone [ie, broken arm, you get up to go to the washroom and stub your foot, breaking your toe, you want to find out right then it's broken, not later when doctor tells you to just live with it like that.
Oh please I so DO want the continuous pain nightmare gone. I need continuous applications of topical anaesthetics on my dermal ulcers to literally keep from screaming.. But from the lab to the market is so interminably long that I fear that I will be dead before it EVER hits the market, or doctors will freak about prescribing it, or it will be so expensive that the physical pain will be replaced by financial pain.. :sigh:
Yes...and? They're not proposing permanent treatments I don't think, just providing relief for people with unendingly painful conditions. And even if they are there's people who would certainly want to give up pain. I know someone who's largely non-functional because of chronic pain due to nerve damage. Her quality of life is terrible because of that, I'm sure it's worth the risk to her to be able to actually use both of her arms.
Just noticed your comment.. Indeed, nerve damage is the worst because they are the source of the pain signals. For instance I have 1 to 2 cm deep dermal ulcers that don't heal, but the nerve fibers do grow outside of the injury.. exposed to the air or dressing. It's like 100 abscess teeth! It soo sux. And I sure do feel for that friend of yours and will pray for her, if it helps...
I'm very glad this discovery is coming along, and hope it gets out on the market quickly (and at a reasonable price).
I had the personal experience of knowing an individual who could feel pain well enough .. but couldn't identify from the pain where the injury was! He happened to be a Montagnard, Nott, the M-79 gunner on my recon team in Vietnam (long long ago) .. but I suppose that's neither here nor there. I saw him get injured several times and it was always the same thing. It usually took a couple of seconds; his expression would show pain and discomfort; and he'd start checking out his body to see what was hurt. Usually he couldn't pin it down until he found the bleeding part (first time I saw it), or found a joint wasn't working properly or would generate higher pain levels when used.
He lived with it just fine, but I found it curious to say the least.
The best part about nerve damage is that it's not even really relevant. Pain is supposed to tell you about something broken in your body, but nerve damage means you have pain just because!
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+...
Email has been sent. (From email address associated with my profile.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."