Scientists find chronic pain on-off switch

[cljanney]

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060719-071105-2387r

Would like to read the whole publication, but it looks like we'll have to wait till August.

Scientists find chronic pain on-off switch


NEW YORK, July 19 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they have discovered an "on-off" switch for chronic pain in which current medications are ineffective or have serious side effects.

The Columbia University Medical Center scientists have discovered an enzyme called protein kinase G, which acts as a switch for chronic pain.

Most prior attempts at alleviating chronic pain have focused on the "second order" neurons in the spinal cord that relay pain messages to the brain. But the scientists say it's difficult to inhibit the activity of those neurons with drugs because the drugs need to overcome the blood-brain barrier.

Instead, the CUMC researchers focused on the more accessible "first order" neurons in the body's periphery, which send messages to the spinal cord.

It's been known for years that for chronic pain to persist, a master switch must be turned on inside the peripheral neurons, but the identity of that switch was a mystery.

The discovery by Cell Biology Professor Richard Ambron and Assistant Professor of Anatomy Ying-Ju Sung appears on the Web site of the journal Neuroscience, and will be published in the journal's August issue.

[dejerine]

cljanney, thanks for the post.

It is always good news to read of progress.

I have long wondered how on earth stimulation of the motor cortex could possibly stop pain, which is sensory.

However, protein kinase G causes the contractions of the smooth muscle in the gut which are the result of Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP). VIP is a well known pain chemical with many ties to various pain pathways.

It wonder if protein kinase G is indeed some sort of link between muscle activity and pain. However, the really incredible pain in my muscles is, I assume, due to skeletal muscle and not smooth muscle. Of course, PKG may play a role there also. All the kinases merely put high energy phosphate bonds (phosphorylation) on other chemicals, making them active. Dr. Young has written here on Protein Kinase C, for example.

In the gut, PKG is part of a linkup between Nitric Oxide, cyclic GMP, and PKG.
NO is known to be a pain chemical, cGMP has been associated with migraine for some time, and now we have claims against PKG.

I went to the Journal of Neuroscience website to see if I could read more on this post, and could not find it. However, I did find that the journal has a section on promising areas of nerve research that need funding. So far as I am aware, this is the ONLY journal which has a section aimed at increasing federal funding.

I continue to feel the national religion known as the Church of NASA is soaking up a disproportionate share of science dollars. Those amazing rocket ships soak up about seventy percent of all research dollars. I find this obscene when there are humans suffering in severe pain. The National Science Foundation, which is on thin ice because it is beholden to the feds for money, nevertheless has complained that so much money is being thrown into space. The International Space Station will require about twenty more flights in the next few years. This station serves no military purpose I am aware of. The only scientific purpose is to show a way to grow pure crystals. Scientists in the field all agree that much less expensive robotic nonmanned space flight is the preferred method. Either way, our money must benefit mankind, and not in the way of employment for physics graduates. Physics has already been done, at least according to a recent Nobel laureate. He recommended money be spent on studying the brain.

I feel like an oddball saying NASA is a big waste of money, but somehow I just don't see the Emperor's clothes. Do you?

What I do see are people in severe pain being told to go to hell, which is redundant. It is time for the physicists and astronomer's to step down off their high horses of sciences, and give themselves a real challenge to see if they can understand the brain, instead of pretending that speculations over pictures of moon, asteroids, satellites of distant space objects is of any benefit, whatsoever, to human beings, anywhere.

How can we worry about land contours on Jupiters moons when pain still hasn't been solved? There is no logic to this, only political districts which would lose jobs if we quit hyping the jiffy photos of various boring chunks of rock floating around in space. Seeing them makes us feel elevated, of course, but the pride is not real. Space never stops. There is no end to space research, but we can stop pain. The fact is that cell biology has become a whole lot tougher in school than math, physics, and chemistry. And of course it is also tougher than medical school. The main difference is that since government funding is missing, pain research is still the poor man's field. I am convinced that until some powerful legislator has a pain research center in his elective district, our progress on pain will be slow. The failure to solve pain is political, not scientific. We have got to stop making Saints out of astronauts, and start making Saints out of pain researchers. The public basks in the glory of NASA as if their exploits reflects well on themselves. NASA takes great pains to keep it going, like the recent statement that part of Jupiters moon resembles earth. That was the headline, the reality was the the frozen surface goes up and down. Big deal.

We have to find a new PR approach. Personally, I think Alan's article on pain should be required reading for every science major at every college in the U.S. It is too brutal for high school.

[NorthQuad]

Columbia University researchers discover on-off switch for chronic pain

New York, NY, July 19, 2006 -- Chronic pain affects approximately 48 million people in the U.S. and current medications are either largely ineffective or have serious side effects. But researchers from Columbia University Medical Center have discovered a protein in nerve cells that acts as a switch for chronic pain, and have applied for a patent to develop a new class of drugs that will block chronic pain by turning this switch off. The discovery is published on the website of the journal Neuroscience, and will appear in the publication's August issue.

more...

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-07/cumc-cur071906.php

[Le Type Français]

Excellent! Hopefully this will help everyone dealing with this issue.

[NorthQuad]

I hope it will help also. My pain is going down finally but I can remember a time when everything that touched my skin felt like a red hot poker burning my flesh. 48 million people suffering from chronic pain in the U.S. alone is a huge number.