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Block Your Pain With the Aid of Deadly Toxin

by Karishma Abhishek on Dec 20 2021 11:57 PM

Block Your Pain With the Aid of Deadly Toxin
Scientists uncover a new way to silence multiple types of pain through a dangerous microbe — the deadly anthrax toxin as per a study in mice, at the Harvard Medical School, published in Nature Neuroscience.
Anthrax is widely known to cause serious lung infections in humans and unsightly, albeit painless, skin lesions in livestock and people. Moreover, the anthrax bacterium has even been used as a weapon of terror.

However, the study team shed light on the unexpected potential benefits of it in pain management.

It is found that the anthrax toxin works to alter signaling in pain-sensing neurons and, when delivered in a targeted manner into neurons of the central and peripheral nervous system, can offer relief to animals in distress.

The technique may soon help design novel precision-targeted pain treatments without the widespread systemic effects.

“This molecular platform of using a bacterial toxin to deliver substances into neurons and modulate their function represents a new way to target pain-mediating neurons,” says study senior investigator Isaac Chiu, associate professor of immunology in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School.

Source-Medindia


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