News Archive

Editor’s note: The following is a summary of the John Bonica Named Lecture delivered at the Australian Pain Society 39th Annual Scientific Meeting. John Bonica—widely regarded as the founding…

Spinal cord pain processing is a complicated phenomenon involving different neurobiological mechanisms and molecular players. Dorsal horn disinhibition spurred by brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and excitation mediated by NMDA…

Pain is more than a physical sensation. For many people, it extends beyond the sensory “ouch” and is associated with negative affective states, including anxiety, depression, and reduced motivation.…

Chronic pain exacts a huge toll on patients, healthcare systems, and the economy. But the way that chronic pain is typically defined—by how long it lasts—provides little information about…

Physicians have at their disposal a battery of tests to measure heartrate, blood pressure, and temperature—objective, quantifiable indicators of disease. But no such biomarkers exist yet for chronic pain.…

For decades, antidepressants have been a first-line treatment for neuropathic pain. Yet how these drugs function at the cellular and molecular level to produce analgesia is not well understood,…

Past experiences shape our expectations about the future, and those expectations can simultaneously affect how we experience new events. Sometimes this can result in a self-fulfilling prophecy where people…

Botulinum toxin, a neurotoxin made by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, inhibits neuronal signaling by blocking neurotransmitter release, leading to paralysis. Researchers from University College London (UCL), UK; the University…

Non-peptide opioid drugs like morphine and fentanyl bind to opioid receptors (ORs) on the neuronal cell membrane, just as naturally occurring peptide OR ligands do, to bring about analgesia.…

Patients who take opioids for chronic pain typically develop tolerance to these drugs. Now, researchers led by Taka-aki Koshimizu, Jichi Medical University, Shimotsuke, Japan, and Yukio Takano, Fukuoka University,…

Pain researchers and advocates are cheering the announcement of the HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative, which promises to roughly double US National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding…

Survival is the prime directive of every animal, and it takes work. Animals are under constant threat from starvation, thirst, extreme temperatures, and life-threatening injury and illness. But when…

For decades, researchers have looked for the molecular sensors tuned to potentially harmful heat. Now, a team led by Joris Vriens and Thomas Voets, University of Leuven, Belgium, has…