CAUSE OF ONGOING SPONTANEOUS PAIN DISCOVERED

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CAUSE OF ONGOING SPONTANEOUS PAIN DISCOVERED
10 April 2007 - University of Bristol

New research shows that it is undamaged nerve fibres that cause ongoing spontaneous pain, not those that are injured. Previous research into ongoing chronic pain has tended to focus on the damaged nerve fibres after injury or disease and overlooked the intact fibres. This new understanding may help pharmaceutical companies formulate novel pain killers.

Professor Lawson said: “The cause of this ongoing pain and why it arises spontaneously was not understood before. Now that we know the type of nerve fibres involved, and especially that it is the undamaged fibres that cause this pain, we can examine them to find out what causes them to continually send impulses to the brain. This should help in the search for new analgesics that are effective for controlling ongoing pain.”

Ongoing pain is a burning or sharp stabbing/shooting pain that can occur spontaneously after nerve injury. Unlike ‘evoked’ pain caused, for example, by hitting your thumb with a hammer, ongoing pain is particularly difficult to live with because it is often impossible to treat with currently available pain killers.

Djouhri and Lawson show that the nerve cells responsible are ‘nociceptors’ or damage detectors. There are thousands of these nerves cells, each of which has a very long, fine nerve fibre emerging from it. These fibres run within nerves and connect the skin or other tissues to the spinal cord.

When activated through damage or disease, these nerve fibres fire electrical impulses that travel along the fibre from the site of injury to the spinal cord, from where information is sent to the brain. The faster the undamaged fine fibres fire, the stronger the ongoing pain becomes.

Dr Djouhri added: “The cause of this firing appears to be inflammation within the nerves or tissues, caused by dying or degeneration of the injured nerve fibres within the same nerve.”

The mechanism described by Djouhri and Lawson occurs following nerve injury and in nerve and tissue inflammation. Further research is now needed to establish how generally this mechanism may contribute to ongoing pain associated with a wide variety of diseases such as back pain or shingles.

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About: University of Bristol
The University College of Bristol opened in 1876, after six years of discussions and controversy, in a bid to bring university culture to the provinces. It was the first college in the country to admit men and women on an equal footing.

The University’s Research and Enterprise Development (RED) division was launched in 2000 to stimulate and support an entrepreneurial culture and encourage the growth of technology-based business.

2003 saw the completion of the Dorothy Hodgkin building, named after the University’s fifth Chancellor. The £18 million building is dedicated to research in neuroendocrinology. 2003 also saw the opening of the University’s £5 million Centre for Sport, Exercise and Health.

Work on a new, state-of-the-art engineering building is due to be completed in early 2004. The £20 million BLADE project (Bristol Laboratory for Advanced Dynamics Engineering) will bring together the Engineering Faculty’s six departments to establish Europe’s most advanced dynamics engineering research facilities.

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