Category Archives: Chronic Pain

Study Assesses Quality of Life After Cannabis Prescribed for Chronic Pain and Other Health Symptoms

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Margaret-Ann Tait | PhD candidate
Project Manager, The QUEST Initiative
Research Manager, Faculty of Medicine and Health
Sydney Nursing School, Cancer Care Research Unit
University of Sydney

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: In 2016 Australia passed legislation that allows cannabis use for medicinal purposes. Since then, an estimated 800,000 patients have received medicinal cannabis prescriptions. We wanted to know if patients with chronic health conditions in Australia are reporting their health outcomes differently after being prescribed medicinal cannabis. We used validated questionnaires to assess their health-related quality of life, levels of fatigue, pain, sleep disturbance, anxiety, and depression before starting therapy and then at regular intervals for three months after. 

We had 2327 patients participating from across Australia aged between 18 and 97 (the average age was 51), and nearly two thirds were female. Half of our participants were prescribed medicinal cannabis for more than one condition, with chronic pain conditions reported more frequently, followed by insomnia, anxiety, and mixed anxiety & depression.

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Nerve Pathway Identified That May Mitigate Pain from Endometriosis

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Robert N. Taylor, MD PhD
Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Investigator, Clinical and Translational Research Center
Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
University at Buffalo

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Our laboratory has been interested in the hormonal modulation of endometriosis-associated pain for decades. This disease and its manifestations are multifactorial. In the current study we focused on the role of nerve growth factors and their receptors, interactive proteins that direct the growth of new nerves and allow their circuits to communicate to regions of the brain that sense pain.

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NEJM: Vertex Pharma Study Demonstrates Potential for First-in-Class Non-Opioid Treatment For Moderate to Severe Acute Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Vertex Pharma Company Spokesperson

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? How does VX-548 work?

Response: VX-548 is an oral, selective NaV1.8 inhibitor that is highly selective for NaV1.8 relative to other NaV channels. NaV1.8 is a voltage-gated sodium channel that plays a critical role in pain signaling in the peripheral nervous system. NaV1.8 is a genetically validated target for the treatment of pain, and Vertex has previously demonstrated clinical proof-of-concept with a small molecule investigational treatment targeting NaV1.8 in multiple pain indications including acute pain, neuropathic pain and musculoskeletal pain.

 Vertex’s approach is to selectively inhibit NaV1.8 using small molecules with the objective of creating a new class of medicines that have the potential to provide superior relief of pain without the limitations of opioids, including their addictive potential. VX-548 is the most advanced NaV1.8 inhibitor in Vertex’s program.

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NYU Lab Harnesses Gene Therapy to Tackle Chronic Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Rajesh Khanna, PhD

Director, NYU Pain Research Center
Professor, Department of Molecular Pathobiology
Professor, Department of Neuroscience and Physiology
Investigator, Neuroscience Institute
New York University


PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Chronic pain affects an estimated 20-30% of the global population, significantly impacting quality of life and mental health. It poses substantial socioeconomic burdens, with costs relating to healthcare and lost productivity. Despite its prevalence, chronic pain remains underdiagnosed and undertreated worldwide, highlighting a crucial need for enhanced awareness, research, and therapeutic strategies.

Among the many targets being pursued for the development of drugs against chronic pain conditions are key proteins in neurons that are involved in the signaling of pain. A key family of these targets is the voltage-gated sodium channel family. Among them, the Nav1.7 sodium channel plays a critical role in the development and maintenance of chronic pain. It is an integral part of the peripheral nervous system and is highly expressed in nociceptive (pain-sensing) neurons, including the dorsal root ganglia and sympathetic ganglion neurons.

Nav1.7 channels act as a threshold channel, amplifying small sub-threshold depolarizations and generating action potentials, which are the electrical signals responsible for transmitting sensory information, including pain, to the brain. In essence, they work as a key amplifier of signals from peripheral pain-sensing neurons to central pain pathways.

Certain genetic mutations that cause either a gain or loss of Nav1.7 function can lead to conditions associated with altered pain perception. Gain-of-function mutations, which increase the activity of the channel, can lead to pain syndromes like Inherited Erythromelalgia (IE) and Paroxysmal Extreme Pain Disorder (PEPD). In contrast, loss-of-function mutations, which decrease or eliminate the activity of Nav1.7, result in Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP), a condition where individuals are unable to feel pain.

Given this integral role, Nav1.7 has become a focus of interest as a target for new analgesic drugs. The development of Nav1.7 inhibitors could offer a new avenue for more effective and targeted treatment strategies for chronic pain conditions. It’s a promising area of research, though there are still challenges to be met, such as achieving sufficient specificity for the Nav1.7 channel to avoid side effects associated with other sodium channels.

In the NYU Pain Research Center in the College of Dentistry at New York University (https://dental.nyu.edu/research/pain-research-center.html), the Khanna lab is pursuing alternative ways to target Nav1.7 for pain relief.

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Study Finds More Than 10 Million New Cases of Adult Chronic Pain Per Year

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Richard L. Nahin, MPH, PhD
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health
National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: While there has been extensive research examining the prevalence of chronic pain, far less is known about the incidence of chronic pain.  Understanding the incidence of chronic pain is critical to understanding how such pain manifests and evolves over time.

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COCHRANE: Poor Evidence for Prescription Antidepressants for Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Professor Tamar Pincus PhD
Professor in Health Psychology
Dean of the Faculty of the Environment and Life Sciences
University of Southampton

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Antidepressants are recommended by guidelines for many chronic pain conditions. The most common prescribed antidepressant in amitriptyline. We carried out the largest and most systematic review of all antidepressants for all pain condition, at any dose, to test whether they were effective at reducing pain, increasing physical function, and improving mood and sleep. We reviewed 176 trials with almost 30,000 participants. We rated each study for its methodology so we could rank each drug according to how much we could be certain of the evidence.

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Chronic Multifocal Pain Linked to Accelerated Cognitive Decline

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Yiheng Tu
CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health
Institute of Psychology
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Department of Psychology
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Beijing, China

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Chronic pain (CP) is a leading source of disability worldwide. Multisite chronic pain, where pain is experienced in multiple anatomical locations, affects almost half of chronic pain patients and has been found to have a greater burden on patients’ overall health. However, However, it has not been clear whether people with multisite chronic pain suffered from aggravated neurocognitive abnormalities.

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Altered Body Perception in Stroke Survivors with Chronic Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dr Brendon Haslam PhD
La Trobe University and The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
University of Melbourne
On behalf of the research team that is a collaboration of researchers from the University of South Australia, La Trobe University, University of Melbourne and University of California, San Francisco

Dr Haslam PhD

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: People who experience a stroke are three times more likely to experience chronic pain than the general population. Chronic pain following stroke has additional impact on stroke survivors, making it even harder for them to carry out everyday tasks related to their personal care, occupational and recreational activities. As a result, stroke survivors with chronic pain suffer additional disorders of mood, including depression, that further reduce their quality of life beyond that that is caused by the stroke itself.

Unfortunately, there is currently very little evidence to show effective treatments for stroke survivors with chronic pain. This includes the use of medications and other health therapies. In looking to understand chronic pain following stroke, and be able to develop new therapy approaches for this population, we explored how stroke survivors with and without pain perceive their own bodies. For this study, we particularly explored how they perceived their hand size to be.

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Chronic Pain Linked to Later Life Pessimism and Joblessness

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Alex Bryson PhD
Professor of Quantitative Social Science
UCL Social Research Institute
University College London  London

Prof. Bryson

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: The authors were concerned to know more about both the incidence of chronic pain and its implications for health, wellbeing and labour market prospects later in life.  So we turned to a birth cohort study (The National Child Development Study) tracking all those born in Britain in a single week in 1958 through to age 62 to take a life-course approach.

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iovera° Cryoneurolysis Treatment is Drug-Free Option for Knee Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Vinod Dasa MD
Professor of Clinical Orthopaedics
Director of Research
Louisiana State University Health

PainRelief.com:  Would you describe cryoneurolysis?

Response: Cryoneurolysis is a specialized intense cold therapy technique that provides long-term pain relief without the use of any system drugs. The iovera° system has revolutionized the delivery of long term, drug-free pain relief by delivering a concentrated, targeted cold therapy through a handheld device. The iovera° treatment blocks targeted sensory nerves from sending pain signals. Small closed-end needles are inserted into the treatment region and a treatment cycle is performed until the nerve is blocked, providing pain relief until the nerve regenerates. The localized nerve blocks and targets peripheral nerves to temporarily stop pain signals for up to 90 days and provide immediate, long-lasting pain relief without the need for opioids. The iovera° treatment is used to treat specific nerves so the pain relief is focused only on the part of the body that is being treated.

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