Inhibits pain without causing numbness

An injection also brings a feeling of numbness for several hours. This will soon be the past. Harvard Medical University Professor Clifford Woolf and Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, USA) and colleagues recently developed a two-component compound that is able to significantly inhibit pain without causing numbness. motor paralysis. This special substance is made up of the usual inflexible local anesthetic (QX314) and capsaicin derivative - the type of pain in red pepper.

Scientists have recently developed a two-component compound that can significantly inhibit pain without causing numbness or motor paralysis.The compound contains ingredients from red peppers.
(Photo: iStockphoto / Angel Rodriguez)

Woolf explained in an important presentation called 'Using pain to treat pain' at an international conference on 'Development and function of body sensation and pain' at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (Berlin-Buch, Germany) that capsaicin opens tubes only on pain-sensing nerve fibers that allow the QX314 to penetrate these fibers and inhibit their function . 'This is the first example of the use of the body's cellular tube as a drug delivery system aimed at pain sensing nerve fibers.'

Local anesthetics also cause a sense of pain to be used during surgery but the patient is still awake throughout the process, so there is no need for general anesthesia. Woolf said: 'Common anesthetic drugs, including lidocaine, affect all neurons in the anesthetic area.' As a result, not only is the pain receptor receptor inhibited but also the tactile organ causes numbness. Neurons that control muscles also stop working, causing temporary paralysis.

In order to inhibit specific receptor receptors while not affecting the tactile and motor function, the scientists used the active form of non-flexible lidocaine local anesthetic. The common cave is called QX314. This lidocaine type is very special because it cannot penetrate the membrane of neurons because of the electrical charge. Because local anesthetic is only active in neurons, it is useless to inject QX314 only with neurons. Unlike QX314, lidocaine can easily pass through the membrane of all the magnetic cells that inhibit every neuron.

Because QX314 only penetrates the neurotransmitter neuron, it acts as a pain suppressor. Scientists combined it with capsaicin. Capsaicin binds to a cell receptor that only appears in the membrane of nerve cells responsible for receiving pain. Therefore, the chili compound can open tubes in the cell, allowing QX314 to pass through and inhibit the pain receptor. Experiments on mice showed that when applied on the back limbs of animals, the mixture of QX314 and capsaaixin only inhibited the pain receptor . While completely inhibiting the reaction with painful stimulation, the animal can move as well as have a normal tactile response.

However, according to Woolf, this strategy still has a drawback. Capsaicin activates sensitive organ activity with pain and heat.'Therefore, the patient will have a burning sensation in the mouth if eating spicy food. In order to be able to apply pain-killing compounds in patients, it is necessary to find a way to open the cell lines that allow QX314 to pass without using capsaic to give rise to a painful burning sensation until When QX314 gets inside the cell and relieves the pain ' . However, he and his colleagues are still working on finding answers and have recently found pathways that promise pain-free help bring QX314 into pain-sensing fibers hoping to soon be applied. for dental patients or pregnant women during delivery.