Wise Young
09-27-2001, 02:49 PM
Pain control: breaking the circuit [Comment]
Stephen P. Hunt
Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 2000, 21:8:284-286
Abstract
There is no abstract for this article. The text below is the first paragraph of text within the article.
Pain researchers are frequently called upon to suggest targets for the development of novel analgesics. These researchers tend to fall into two groups: those who favour the peripheral sensory nerve as the most accessible target for exploration and those, with perhaps more respect for the enigmatic qualities of pain, who target the CNS as the most likely site for effective long-term control of pain. Whichever option is chosen it seems from past experience that certain pain conditions yield to peripheral intervention whereas others require drugs that act predominantly within the CNS. Thus, it comes as something of a revelation that a series of recent publications from the same laboratory have uncovered what seems to be the major central mechanism for the control of pain sensitivity, regardless of the type of pain state that had been invoked experimentally 1-3 . The key neurone lies within the superficial lamina I of the spinal cord, projects to the brainstem and receives nociceptive inputs from the majority of peripheral tissues 4. The second surprise was that the neurone was identified purely because it expressed the receptor for the peptide neurotransmitter substance P (SP).
Stephen P. Hunt
Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 2000, 21:8:284-286
Abstract
There is no abstract for this article. The text below is the first paragraph of text within the article.
Pain researchers are frequently called upon to suggest targets for the development of novel analgesics. These researchers tend to fall into two groups: those who favour the peripheral sensory nerve as the most accessible target for exploration and those, with perhaps more respect for the enigmatic qualities of pain, who target the CNS as the most likely site for effective long-term control of pain. Whichever option is chosen it seems from past experience that certain pain conditions yield to peripheral intervention whereas others require drugs that act predominantly within the CNS. Thus, it comes as something of a revelation that a series of recent publications from the same laboratory have uncovered what seems to be the major central mechanism for the control of pain sensitivity, regardless of the type of pain state that had been invoked experimentally 1-3 . The key neurone lies within the superficial lamina I of the spinal cord, projects to the brainstem and receives nociceptive inputs from the majority of peripheral tissues 4. The second surprise was that the neurone was identified purely because it expressed the receptor for the peptide neurotransmitter substance P (SP).