To overcome this, a major project funded by HEAL is focused on studying the nervous system of people with chronic pain more directly, in part with patients undergoing surgery for chronic pain. Along with regeneration of damaged dorsal root ganglia and trigeminal nerve from cadaveric donors. . These samples are then cultured and tested using new technologies – like things Proteomics, Local transcriptomics And Metabolomics To see how they differ from normal tissue. The goal, Gereau explained, is to understand what changes occur at the cellular level when pain becomes chronic, and to create an atlas of these mechanisms and mutations. Understanding this, he added, will ultimately open the door to precision medicine, in which drugs can be designed to specifically target these changes, rather than treating pain with anti-inflammatories or opioids. be terminated from
“In the beginning, everyone thought they were going to find this breakthrough pain medication that would replace opioids,” Gero said. Increasingly, though, it looks like chronic pain, like cancer, can have a range of genetic and cellular drivers that vary depending on the condition and the specific makeup of the person experiencing it. “What we’re learning is that pain is not just one thing,” Gereau added. “It’s a thousand different things, all called ‘pain’.”
For patients too The landscape of chronic pain is wildly varied. Some people endure a miserable year of lower back pain, only to have it disappear for no apparent reason. Others are not so lucky. A friend of a friend spent five years with her son with severe pain in his arm and face after roughhousing. He had to stop working, couldn’t drive, couldn’t even get in a car without a neck brace. His doctors prescribed endless drugs: high doses of gabapentin, plus duloxetine and others. At one point, he admitted himself to a psychiatric ward, because his pain was so bad that he was suicidal. There, he met other people who committed suicide after living with excruciating pain day and night.
What makes chronic pain so terrifying is that it’s chronic: a grinding pain that never goes away. For people with extreme pain, this is easy to understand. But even less serious cases can be miserable. A pain rating of 3 or 4 out of 10 sounds mild, but is painful and limiting almost all the time. Unlike a broken arm, which gets better, or tendinitis, which hurts in response to overuse, chronic pain shrinks your whole world. It’s hard to work, exercise, and even do many of the little things that make life rewarding and rich.
It is also lonely. When my arms first went crazy, I could barely function. But even after the worst, I rarely saw friends. I still couldn’t drive for more than a few minutes, or sit comfortably in a chair, and I felt guilty inviting people over when there was nothing to do. As Christine Wesley, director and co-founder of the Chronic Pain Research Alliance, says: “With chronic pain, the drugs, if you take them, they push you over a hump, and you’re on your way. What people don’t realize is that when you have chronic pain, even if you’re on medication, you rarely feel like you used to. They can ease your pain are, but usually do not eliminate it.”