Lying nerves

2000/02/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Osasuna

Chronic pain occurs when the nerves in the spine are damaged and the pain response is increased. This disease may be due to cancer, osteoarthritis, or nerve damage. As a result of the damage, the patient feels a smooth puncture like a knife.

Powerful pain relievers such as morphine are used to mitigate pain, but with harmful side effects. For this reason, Minneapolis Minnesota University researcher Patrick Mantyn wanted to explore a new way to alleviate pain. These affected neurons use a substance called P to communicate with each other and it occurred to Minneapolis researchers to transform it to destroy damaged nerves. To do this, the toxic protein in roofing plants was associated with substance P. When the new substance called SP-SAP Neuron is taken and introduced as P, it is poisoned and unused. The treatment has been tested with rats and has yielded good results, and in 200 days the effect of SP-SPA was still evident in rats. Unlike morphine, treated rats retained sensitivity to soft stimuli, so the substance SP-SPA did not affect other pain control mechanisms.

However, if this treatment is to be used in humans, it will be useful for terminal or very special patients, since the pain is softened by the destruction of neurons.