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According to new research conducted by scientists from the University of Sydney, just missing a fatal slap against an annoying fly could be a headache for both of you. They say they have found evidence that insects are able to feel chronic pain after an injury, much like us. In addition, studying why and how insects experience these sensations could help us better understand and treat chronic pain in humans.
Spotting pain in animals like mice or our precious pets is not too difficult. If your dog whines or limps when he walks, it's pretty easy to guess that he might have a pounding pain. But you can not exactly read the face of an insect, and they do not "think" in the same way as we or other mammals.
We know that insects experience what is known as nociception, which is simply defined as being able to detect and respond to an external stimulus that could be damaging to the body, such as the hand of a person who jumps back when she touches a hot stove. And insects carry receptors along the nervous system that should make them feel something very similar to our acute pain sensations when they encounter these stimuli. They also produce chemicals that, at least in our body, act as natural painkillers.
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The evidence is strong enough that insects can feel something that looks like immediate pain. But according to the authors of this latest study published in Science Advances, there has been much less work on their ability to treat chronic pain.
For their macabre experience, they first amputated one of the paws of the fruit fly, which caused neuropathic or nervous pain. In humans, nerve pain is often chronic and difficult to treat. Then they let them heal. When they tested the reaction of the flies to the stimuli, in this case a warm room, the flies were now much more sensitized. More clearly, they tried to escape the room more often at a lower temperature than before the loss of the leg.
"Once the animal has been injured once, it is hypersensitive and tries to protect itself for the rest of its life," said lead author Greg Neely, a pain researcher at the University of Toronto. University of Sydney. "It's pretty cool and intuitive."
Neely and his team then studied the cellular basis of this pattern in flies. In the nervous system of the fly, they found evidence of what is called central sensitization to pain. When this occurs in people, normally painless, often repetitive stimuli can become painful. And something similar seems to happen to these flies.
"The fly receives messages of" pain "from its body that then pass through sensory neurons to the ventral nerve cord, the version of our spine by the fly.In this nerve cord are inhibitory neurons that act as a" "to allow or block the perception of pain depending on the context," said Neely, "After the injury, the injured nerve throws all its cargo into the nerve cord and kills all the brakes forever. of the animal does not brake on his "pain." The threshold of "pain" changes and they are now hypervigilant. "
According to Neely, this pain system is so old in evolution, which could mean that we can use insects as a model in the laboratory to study and ultimately treat the root causes of at least some forms of chronic pain.
"It is important to note that now we know that the stage that causes neuropathic" pain "in flies, mice and probably humans, is the loss of pain brakes in the central nervous system. and definitely stop the pain, "Neely said.
Fruit flies are not the only creatures that scientists study to better understand human pain. Some species of mole rats seem insensitive to the painful burning sensations caused by substances such as capsaicin (the chemical that makes spicy chili) and hydrochloric acid, and researchers hope that one day we we can develop drugs that can help us mimic their pain management strategies.
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