login
Become a member
Quick Registration
Full Registration Benefits -
Free Homepages for Doctors
Free Homepages for Hospitals
Free Homepages for Medical Conference
Free Homepages for NGO's
Personal Health Record Creation
Access to all Medical Slides
Access to all Jobs & Products Sale
Human Pain Gene Discovery Reported from Fruitfly Study
People with minor variations in this gene showed clear differences in susceptibility to acute heat pain and chronic back pain.
The discovery, uncovered in a genome-wide hunt for pain genes in fruit flies, will lead to the development of new analgesics, the identification of risk factors for chronic pain and improved decision-making about the suitability of surgical treatment for different patients, according to Clifford Woolf, director of the F.M. Kirby Center and Program in Neurobiology at Children's.
Nearly 12,000 genes were targeted for mutations specifically in nerve cells, using RNA interference (RNAi) technology.
The team then exposed the different mutant flies to noxious heat, and identified the ones that failed to fly away - and zeroed in on those with mutations that appeared to be specific to pain.
They found that a member of the family of calcium channels should be studied further. Other studies with mice demonstrated that this gene controls sensitivity to noxious heat in mammals as well as flies.
Further, functional MRI imaging revealed that it controls the processing of thermal pain signals in the brain: the heat pain signal seems to arrive appropriately at the thalamus, an early processing center, but does not travel to higher order pain centers in the cortex.
Together with colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of North Carolina, the team looked at four single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and found that certain less common SNPs were associated with reduced sensitivity to acute pain in a test administering a quick series of noxious heat pulses.
|
|
|
More News on: DNA Finger Printing
 Comment & Contribute
|
Medwonders Health Network
- Health News Index
- News Quick Links
 | News Central | | Health Watch | |
| Latest Health News | | Health In Focus | |
| News Category (500+) | | Breaking Health News | |
| Popular News | | Celebrating Life | |
| Health News and Press Release | | Medindia - Exclusive | |
| News Photo Gallery | | India Special | |
| News Video Gallery | | Lifestyle and Wellness | |
| News From Other Resources | |||
| News Categories: |
| » | Research: Bright Colored Chips can Cut Consumption by Half |
| » | Olympic Athlete's Body Via the 80-10-10 Raw Vegan Diet |
| » | Importance of Canned Foods To Help Tackle IOM Weight Of The Nation Recommendations, Highlights Study |
| » | US Rules Pomegranate Juice Claims Deceptive |
| » | Reducing Entrée Size Could Increase Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Children |
| More Diet News | |
|
Genetics & Stem Cells Related News |
||||||||
| » | Genetic Traits Likely to Predispose Voters to Elect a Specific Candidate | » | Gene Behind Chronic Inflammation Accelerated Aging and Cancer Identified | |||||
| » | Discovery Of Male Fertility Genes | » | Disease Risk Prediction may Not be Improved by Genetic Information | |||||
| » | Scientists Map Gene Sequence of Drug Resistant VRSA | » | Marker in Premies' Saliva Predicts Readiness to Feed by Mouth | |||||
| » | Recovery From MS Maybe With Growth Factor In Stem Cells | » | 'Rare' Genetic Variants are Surprisingly Common: Report Life Scientists | |||||
| Read More >> | ||||||||
