Around 1 in 5 Spaniards suffer from chronic pain that can be continuous or intermittent and that affects those who suffer it in such a way that many lose their appetite, are unable to work or perform any type of physical activity. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Bern (Switzerland) has identified a mechanism in the brain responsible for this chronic pain. His discovery may open the way to new treatments for this medical problem . The study has been published in the journal Neuron.
“The constant perception of pain seriously influences the quality of life of patients and represents an extraordinary emotional burden . Therefore, understanding the development of chronic pain is of utmost importance for neuroscience research ”, explains Thomas Névian, leader of the study.
Experts have discovered through experiments with laboratory mice in order to look for electrical fluctuations between neurons of the limbic system, that the region of the brain in which neurons were modified by chronic pain establishing a kind of “pain memory” was the cingulate gyrus, a brain area associated with emotional aspects of pain: “ Neurons are constantly activated by a noxious stimulus, thus building a memory footprint for pain that becomes irreversible. Our idea was to better understand this mechanism to derive possible new treatment strategies ”, explains Névian.
This circumstance, according to the researchers, occurs because there is a low regulation of an ion channel that leads to an increase in nerve impulses in neurons ; the more nerve impulses, the more pain perception.
Will it be possible to design specific drugs to control the perception of pain? In view of the results, the future is promising, since by activating a receptor sensitive to serotonin in mice, the function of the ion channel was restored. “It has been known for some time that serotonin can modulate pain perception. However, what is new in our study is that we have now been able to identify a specific serotonin receptor subtype that reduced pain perception more efficiently . This is an important result, which could help to treat chronic pain more efficiently in the future ”, says the researcher.
