NEW PATHWAY TO PAIN MEDICATIONS

Abstract

A GENE, THE ENZYME IT ENCODES, and a small molecule it helps produce have been found to control sensitivity to chronic pain in people. The study provides new molecular targets for medications that could alleviate chronic pain, a condition for which new drugs are urgently needed. Tens of millions of people in the U.S. suffer chronic pain. The condition may start with an injury, spinal disc problem, or a disease like diabetes, and it persists for weeks, months, or years. Some patients respond only partially or not at all to current drugs, which can cause serious side effects, such as sedation, nausea, and cognitive changes. Professor of anesthesia research Clifford J. Woolf of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and Harvard Medical School and coworkers have now identified a gene that affects sensitivity to chronic pain ( Nat. Med. , DOI: 10.1038/nm1490). Expression of the gene increases when animals receive pain stimuli, and blocking these increases prevents the animals ...