Could Brain Stimulation Replace Opiates?

Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky

Frumious Bandersnatch
Joined
Nov 3, 1999
Messages
1,220
Location
Looking-Glass Land
thefix.com said:
Electrically stimulating the brain may provide drug-free pain management, research suggests.

Could electricity one day overtake pain pills? New research suggests that electrical stimulation of certain brain regions may release an opiate-like substance that reduces severe pain, mimicking the effects of pharmaceutical pain-relievers. The naturally-occurring substance is a "mu-opioid," and pain relief occurs when it binds with a mu-opioid receptor—which is also how most pharmaceutical opiates (like morphine) work. “This is arguably the main resource in the brain to reduce pain,” says lead researcher Dr. Alexandre DaSilva, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. “We’re stimulating the release of our (body’s) own resources to provide analgesia. Instead of giving more pharmaceutical opiates, we are directly targeting and activating the same areas in the brain on which they work." In the recent study, researchers stimulated the brain of an individual who suffered from trigeminal neuropathic pain (TNP)—a type of chronic, severe facial pain. They used a low dose of electricity—2 milliamperes (mA)—which is significantly less than the dosage of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) used to treat depression and other psychiatric conditions. After one session, the patient’s threshold for cold pain improved by 36%, but not the patient’s clinical, TNP/facial pain. This suggests that repetitive electrical stimulation over several sessions might be required to have a lasting effect on clinical pain. But if successful, says DaSilva, electrical stimulation could foreseeably be used in place of highly-addictive pharmaceutical painkillers.
Click to expand...

http://www.thefix.com/content/brain-stimulation-replace-opiates91093

Oh god...
 
^ seriously.

Great, so now when we wanna do opiates we'll have to electrically shock our brains.
And so is this a permanent increase of mu opioid or what? I couldn't tell from the article because they were talking about doing multiple treatments in a way that made me think they were expecting to only need one. I don't know. Don't like the concept or the reporting on it.
 
All this is detailing is that if you zap someone's brain with mild electrical current, a neuropeptide that has painkilling activity is released. Definitely not a replacement for painkillers nor a permanent solution.
 
The problem with peptides is that they are usually too large or too polar to cross the blood-brain barrier very well. For instance there exist potent opioid peptides like endorphine and DAMGO, but they are of no clinical use because they would only have central effects if administered intrathecally/intracerebroventricularly.

Also, there are protiens in milk/wheat hydrolysate that have opioid activity - the caseomorphins in particular. But milk very clearly does not have a central analgesic effect!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top