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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.
Yes, you want to have the pain until you have pinpointed the problem. Then you can turn off the alarm.
So yes, people need to be very careful about using a "cure" for pain. People who don't feel pain can end up with much more serious damage to themselves from otherwise mundane causes than people who do feel pain.
Ever burn yourself on a stove and yank your hand back? Someone who doesn't feel pain would probably not notice until they figured out that the burning smell was their own charred flesh.
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.
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.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I suffer from chronic pain. I use painkillers to dull it, but it never goes away. Sometimes it is useful, telling me that something I'd wrong, but most of the time it's just meaningless suffering without end.
What I need is something to turn off the meaningless chronic part, but leave the acute pain there so I realise when I am damaged or unwell.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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.
resinoferatoxin is considered ~1000x 'hotter' than pure capsaicin and is being developed for permanent pain relief uses in cases such as end-stage cancer.
It operates by causing the pain receptors to fire continuously until they die and you don't want to be awake for that, so sedation is required. Since it is targeted in nature, it may be applicable in the GP's wife's case where the issue is with specific nerves.
I stumbled across it a while back for unrelated reasons (I enjoy eating quite spicy foods and they love comparing it with peppers) it is being developed to provide relief for chronic pain.
Obviously any interested should check with their doctor, or the company developing this for options. I have no idea if it will work in any given situation or not, or when it might be available, and am not a doctor..
--- Mercutio was right.
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
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
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...
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+...