To overcome this, one of the major projects funded by HEAL is to restore dysfunctional dorsal root ganglia and trigeminal nerves from patients undergoing surgery for chronic pain or from cadaveric donors. It focuses on studying the nervous system of people with chronic pain more directly. . These samples are then cultured and examined using a range of new techniques, including proteomics, spatial transcriptomics, and metabolomics, to see how they differ from normal tissue. The goal is to identify what changes occur at the cellular level when pain becomes chronic, and create an atlas of those mechanisms and changes, Gerow explained. Understanding that could ultimately open the door to precision medicine, allowing drugs to be designed to specifically target those changes, rather than simply relieving pain with anti-inflammatory drugs or opioids. Yes, he added.
“Initially, everyone thought we would find a breakthrough painkiller to replace opioids,” Gerow said. However, chronic pain such as cancer may involve a variety of genetic and cellular factors that vary depending on both the symptoms and the specific makeup of the person experiencing the pain. is being increasingly considered. “What we're learning is that pain is not just one thing,” Gerow added. “It's a thousand different things, all called 'pain.'”
For patients too, Chronic pain situations are very diverse. Some people endure agonizing back pain for years, only to have it go away for no apparent reason. Some people are not so lucky. A friend of a friend spent five years with extreme pain in his arms and face after a rough life with his son. He had to stop working and was unable to drive or even ride in a car without a neck brace. His doctor prescribed maximum doses of gabapentin plus duloxetine and other endless medications. At one point, the pain was so severe that he had suicidal thoughts and was admitted to a psychiatric ward. There he also met people who became suicidal after living in severe pain every day for years.
What makes chronic pain so bad is that it's chronic, meaning it's never-ending suffering. For someone in extreme pain, that's easy to understand. But even less severe cases can be devastating. A pain rating of 3 or 4 out of 10 may seem mild, but being in pain almost constantly is exhausting and limiting. Broken arms get better, tendonitis is painful primarily due to overuse, but chronic pain can make your whole world shrink. It becomes difficult to work, exercise, and even do the many small things that make life rewarding and enriching.
That's sad too. When my arm first went wrong, I could barely function. But even after the worst was over, I rarely saw my friends. I still couldn't drive for more than a few minutes, couldn't sit comfortably in a chair, and felt guilty about having people over when I had nothing to do. “The Chronic Pain Research Alliance is proud to be a leader in chronic pain research. What people don't realize is that when you have chronic pain, even if you're on medication, you're unlikely to feel the same pain as you used to. At best, it can relieve the pain, but it usually cannot eliminate it. ”