A Shot at Pain Prevention: Nerve-healing protein relieves rats’ misery
By John Travis
A chemical that spurs growth of nerve cells during fetal development may provide a new way to treat severe chronic pain that results from nerve damage, according to a study of rodents.
“Is this a promising candidate for a drug? The answer is, absolutely yes,” says Frank Porreca of the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center in Tucson. “It works in multiple models of neuropathic pain.”
Neuropathic pain was recognized during the Civil War. From that conflict, physicians for the first time encountered large numbers of patients with bullet wounds that elicited intense, ongoing pain despite seemingly minor tissue damage. The 19th-century neurologist S. Weir Mitchell documented many cases in which pain persisted for years and where even a slight breeze could trigger a severe burning sensation on a patient’s skin.