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Gene 'May Transform Pain Relief'

Posted by Brian on 22nd January 2008 at 01:11 PM
Gene 'May Transform Pain Relief'
US scientists have developed a gene therapy treatment which they hope could revolutionise pain relief.

Pain vanished for at least three months in rats who were injected in the spine with a gene that triggers endorphins, the body's natural pain killer.

The therapy did not affect the rest of the nervous system, including the brain, potentially preventing the main side-effects of current pain relief.

Studies suggest drugs do not relieve cancer pain in as many as 66% of cases.

The research appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Chronic pain patients often do not experience satisfactory pain relief from available treatments due to poor efficacy or intolerable side effects like extreme sleepiness, mental clouding and hallucinations," said Andreas Beutler, part of the team who conducted the study at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

He said that in some circumstances, patients preferred to continue suffering some pain in order to preserve lucidity.

There is also a potential risk of addiction to opiate drugs.

Pain costs

The team used a disabled cold virus to carry the gene into the spinal fluid of the rats, which had been developed to suffer from chronic pain.

By blocking the pain impulses travelling up to their brains, the rats remained pain-free for at least three months, the researchers wrote.

"Although this research is at a very early stage, the concept of using gene therapy to deliver pain relief is interesting because it could potentially have fewer side effects than conventional pain relief," said Josephine Querido of Cancer Research UK.

But while cancer patients could be among the main beneficiaries of such a technique, a recent European study suggested that as many as 20% of adults suffer from chronic or intermittent pain for which no satisfactory treatment has been found.

Chronic back pain in the UK alone is thought to cost billions.

Scientists have been trying for many years now to harness gene therapy for pain relief but have hit various problems.

This development is "certainly exciting and promising", says Professor Turo Nurmikko, Director of the Pain Research Institute in Liverpool.

"But it is a little too early to say what the ultimate significance of the results is.

"Once the researchers have shown that in animal models of chronic pain, there is long-standing improvement, one could start speaking of a medical breakthrough."


Report as offensive or innapropriate Comment by Guest  25th January 2008
While your article was interesting it not the first time scientists have written papers of yet treatments for which the most of us will never get to try, selfish it may be but true.as a long tine chronic pain patient myself it is now we need help but it is a matter of fact that a lot of chronic pain patiens are treated for depression rather than treating the cause of our "depression", getting the doctors to treat patients with pain as indiviuals and not a collective group, we are all different and all deal with our pain differently so get articles which can give us some hope.

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