Chronic pain tagged posts

Researchers used visual threat manipulation in the virtual reality environment and thermal stimulation to investigate how the brain perceives pain. They found that the brain perceives pain more strongly when the perceived pain is out of alignment with reality. In particular, pain was amplified when unexpected events occurred.

Pain perception can vary greatly. Sometimes, we feel pain more intensely than expected due to an injury or physical ailment but may feel less intense pain at other similar instances. This variability indicates that our perception of pain is highly dependent on our expectations and uncertainty.

Two hypotheses have been proposed to explain how the brain perceives pain.

One is the Estimate Hypothesis, where the brain estimat...

A newly identified link between chronic pain and lung cancer in mice offers hope for pain management. A new study points to possible new treatments for chronic pain with a surprising link to lung cancer. Findings of the research, conducted in laboratory mouse models, open up multiple therapeutic opportunities that could allow the world to improve chronic pain management and eclipse the opioid epidemic.

Pain is an important alarm system that alerts us to tissue damage and prompts us to withdraw from harmful situations...

A typical Western high-fat diet can increase the risk of painful disorders common in people with conditions such as diabetes or obesity, according to a groundbreaking paper authored by a team led by The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, also referred to as UT Health San Antonio.

Moreover, changes in diet may significantly reduce or even reverse pain from conditions causing either inflammatory pain — such as arthritis, trauma or surgery — or neuropathic pain, such as diabetes. The novel finding could help treat chronic-pain patients by simply altering diet or developing drugs that block release of certain fatty acids in the body.

The paper, more than five years in the making, was published in the June edition of the journal Nature Metabolism by a collabora...

Scientists have demonstrated that conolidine, a natural painkiller derived from the pinwheel flower and traditionally used in Chinese medicine, interacts with the newly identified opioid receptor ACKR3/ CXCR7 that regulates opioid peptides naturally produced in the brain. The researchers also developed a synthetic analogue of conolidine, RTI-5152-12, which displays an even greater activity on the receptor.

These findings, which were published on June 3rd in the international journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy (Nature publishing group), further advance the understanding of pain regulation and open alternative therapeutic avenues for the treatment of chronic pain.

Opioid peptides are small proteins that mediate pain relief and emotions, in...