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Washington: A new study provides compelling evidence suggesting that insects also suffer from chronic pain, which lingers long after the healing of an initial injury.
The study published in the journal Science Advances offers the first genetic evidence for the cause of chronic pain in Drosophila (fruit flies), as well as good evidence that similar changes also result in chronic pain in the body. man.
Ongoing research into these mechanisms could lead to the development of treatments that, for the first time, target the cause and not just the symptoms of chronic pain.
"If we can develop drugs or new stem-cell-based therapies that can target and repair the underlying cause, instead of the symptoms, it could help a lot of people," said Associate Professor Neely, whose name is The team of researchers is studying pain with the goal of: developing non-opioid solutions for pain management.
"People do not really think that insects feel any pain. But it has already been shown in many invertebrate animals that they can detect and avoid the dangerous stimuli we perceive as painful. In non-humans, we call this sense "nociception", the sense that detects potentially harmful stimuli such as heat, cold or physical injury, but for simplicity we can talk about what insects feel like "Pain," said Associate Professor Neely.
"We knew that insects could feel the" pain ", but we did not know that an injury could lead to sustained hypersensitivity to normally painless stimuli, just like patients' experiences."
The study of fruit flies focused on neuropathic "pain", which occurs after an injury to the nervous system and is generally described in humans as a burning sensation or a shooting sensation.
Neuropathic pain may occur in human conditions such as sciatica, pinched nerve, spinal cord injury, post-herpetic neuralgia (shingles), diabetic neuropathy, cancer bone pain and accidental injury.
In this study, badociate professor Neely and Dr. Thang Khuong, lead author, have damaged a nerve of a fly's leg. The injury was then allowed to heal completely. After healing the wound, they discovered that the other legs of the fly had become hypersensitive.
"After being hurt once, the animal is hypersensitive and tries to protect itself for the rest of his life. It's pretty cool and intuitive, "said Associate Professor Neely.
Then the team genetically dissected exactly how it works.
"The fly receives messages of" pain "from its body that then pbad 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" "door" to allow or block the perception of pain depending on the context.After the injury, the injured nerve discharges all its cargo into the nerve cord and kills all the brakes, forever.
Then, the rest of the animal has no brake on his "pain". The threshold of "pain" is changing and they are now hypervigilant, "said Associate Professor Neely.
"In humans, chronic pain is supposed to develop either by peripheral sensitization or by central disinhibition. Since our unbiased genomic dissection of the neuropathic "pain" of the fly, all our data suggest that central disinhibition is the underlying and underlying cause of chronic neuropathic pain, "said the professor.
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