Shingles Pain Cause Discovered

It is very likely that when you were a child, you had chickenpox, a mostly benign condition that despite making you extremely itchy, required you to miss a week or two of school. While most parents would think their children are safe from the infection after its resolved, what they don’t realize is that it may show up later in life in a painful form called shingles. A constant feature of shingles is neuralgia—intense pain affecting mainly the nerves of the chest and neck, the trigeminal nerve in the fact, and the lower back. New research out of the University of…
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Neuromodulation and Regenerative Medicine Advances

Highlights from the American Society of Interventional Physicians annual meeting, including neuromodulation, humanistic care, vertebral augmentation, regenerative medicine, controlled substance prescribing, and more. There are numerous medical conferences that Practical Pain Management (PPM) tries to attend and cover. We are fortunate that when the PPM staff can’t attend a conference, we usually can call upon one of our expert editorial board members to act as our “roving reporter.” We were fortunate to have Elmer G. Pinzon, MD, MPH, physiatrist at the University Spine and Sports Specialists in Knoxville, Tennessee, attend this year’s annual meeting of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP), held…
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Algae molecule might put the brakes on arthritis

Arthritis is a degenerative disease that eats away at the joints and is rather difficult to treat, with a cure so far remaining out of reach. But research has now uncovered a new glimmer of hope, in the form of molecule taken from algae that, when modified, might just stop the degenerative effects in their tracks. According to Swiss research institute Empa, to varying extents, arthritis affects around 90 percent of people over the age of 65, making it the most widespread of joint diseases. The condition is characterized by the degradation of the cartilage in the joint, most typically…
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Neuroscientists Focus on Cell Mechanism That Promotes Chronic Pain

Researchers have discovered a new pain-signaling pathway in nerve cells that eventually could make a good target for new drugs to fight chronic pain. The findings, published in the journal PLoS Biology by a UT Dallas neuroscientist and his colleagues, suggest that inhibiting a process called phosphorylation occurring outside of nerve cells might disrupt pain signals, and provide an alternative to opioid drugs for alleviating chronic pain. Dr. Ted Price, the study’s co-author and associate professor of neuroscience in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at UT Dallas, said the finding is significant. “We found a key new signaling pathway that can be managed,” Price…
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Preventing Shingles in RA Patients

The live varicella-zoster vaccine can effectively prevent shingles in rheumatoid arthritis patients starting treatment with the drug tofacitinib, according to results of 2 recently-published studies in Arthritis & Rheumatology. Shingles causes a painful rash that may appear as a stripe of blisters on the trunk of the body. Pain can persist even after the rash is gone (this is called postherpetic neuralgia). Treatments include pain relief and antiviral medications such as acyclovir or valacyclovir. A chickenpox vaccine in childhood or a shingles vaccine as an adult can minimize the risk of developing shingles. Patients who received the shingles vaccine several weeks prior…
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Integrating Stem Cells into Functional Neural Networks

The inherent potential of stem cells to engender any cellular form and function drives the field of regenerative medicine. In recent years, stem cell research has witnessed prolific growth particularly in disease-modeling, drug discovery and patient-specific cell therapy. A major challenge in stem cell-mediated therapy is to understand and promote integration of transplanted stem cells into the host tissue. Fundamental to success of such therapies is development of robust methods to engraft stem cells and monitor their integration into the host network. Central to this theme, David Forsberg, Eric Herlenius and co-workers at Karolinska Institute (Stockholm) and Mahidol University (Bangkok) have recently published…
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Can Weed and Snail Venom Replace Opioids?

In the wake of mounting overdoses and deaths from the opioids-addiction crisis sweeping across the U.S., drugmakers are racing to come up with safer painkillers. Companies are highly motivated to create alternatives to the $4 billion opioid market. The federal government is cracking down on lax prescriptions that contribute to many thousands of deaths a year and has started to block the sale of medications it considers unsafe. Drugs such as morphine, fentanyl, and oxycodone are such powerful analgesics because they so effectively block pain signals by acting directly on the brain. Since they work at such a fundamental level, these…
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Vitamin B3 Reduces Pain From Chemo-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy

Nicotinamide riboside (NR), a type of vitamin B3, may prevent chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), a recent study in animals has shown. Although chemotherapy increases survival rates, it can have serious side effects, including peripheral neuropathy, that affect quality of life.1 "Our findings support the idea that NR could potentially be used to prevent or mitigate CIPN in cancer patients, resulting in a meaningful improvement in their quality of life and the ability to sustain better and longer treatment," said Marta Hamity, PhD, assistant research scientist at University of Iowa, Iowa City. For this study, the researchers examined the effects of…
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Pain Receptors Migrating may cause Chronic Pain

A study led by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) has shown that chronic pain may occur when pain receptors migrate from the nerve cell's surface to the cell's inner chambers, out of the reach of current pain medications. The discovery, in rodents, may lead to the development of a new class of medications for chronic pain that is more potent and less prone to side effects than currently available pain treatments. The study was published online today in the journal Science Translational Medicine. An estimated 20 percent of people have chronic pain at some point. Currently available therapies for chronic…
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Advancing Pain Management Medicine: Human Studies

Nearly every advance in modern medicine, from diagnosis to treatment, has benefited from animal studies. Basic research has made vital contributions to all aspects of medical care, including our understanding of pain pathophysiology. However, the applicability of these findings to humans remains limited. “Translation from animal to human is hindered by many obstacles, in particular with the subject of pain, where the human organism and mind interact in quite a unique way,” Claudia Sommer, MD, a professor of neurology at the University of Würzburg in Germany, told Clinical Pain Advisor. Even so, valuable insights have been gained by the direct…
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