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PAINKILLER
You are a nerve impulse.
You're speeding along the nerve highway as fast
as you possibly can, carrying an urgent pain message to
the brain, when suddenly...
BANG! You hit a wall. A drug has blocked your way.
If life were this simple, we would never have to feel
pain again.
An ongoing quest
Unfortunately, medicine hasn't yet won the "war on pain".
There are many pain relievers available, it's true, but
they have a variety of undesirable side effects
ranging from tolerance to dependency, drowsiness, vomiting,
gastro-intestinal upsets, etc. If only we could stop pain
without causing any side effects! That's the Holy Grail
pain researchers are seeking.
Watch out for that door!
"Ow! That hurts!" Any pain signal, whether it originates
in your stomach or your big toe, takes a similar route.
It starts from the limb or organ affected, hops a nerve
and travels along your spinal cord to your brain. As
soon as your brain receives the signal, you realize
that you've hurt yourself. Ouch!
Painkillers act at very specific points along this route.
Opiates such as morphine, for instance, block pain in
the brain. The major drawback is that by affecting the
brain, such drugs cause undesirable side effects.
New remedies for old pains
After many years of research, the AstraZeneca R&D Montréal
team discovered a novel family of receptors exclusively
located on the dorsal ganglia. These ganglia are located
along the spinal cord, on the path taken by pain signals.
Scientists think that molecules capable of modulating
activity of these receptors could be used to produce a
completely new kind of painkiller, one that
would act only on the dorsal ganglia, with no side-effects
on the brain.
The search continues
One problem: although researchers know that these new
receptors in the dorsal ganglia are probably involved
in transmitting pain, they aren't yet sure of all their
properties and what exactly they do in the human body.
But it's only a matter of time before these determined
scientists find out!
Thanks!
This model is on loan from AstraZeneca Canada inc.
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