Locating a New Step in Pain's Pathway

摘要

As pain sufferers can attest, there's room for improvement in painkilling medications. Many of the current ones can cause side effects, such as stomach ulcers, particularly in people who have to take them over long periods of time for conditions such as arthritis. Work described in this issue now points to what may be a good new target for analgesic drugs; it also sheds light on an inflammatory pain sensitization, which causes patients to feel intense pain even in response to normally innocuous stimuli such as a light touch. On page 884, an international team led by Ulrike Mueller of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, reports having identified the α3 form of the receptor for the neurotransmitter glycine as a key intermediate in transmitting pain signals from the spinal cord to the brain. The work shows that the receptor is needed for pain sensitization―the first time a function has been identified for this particular receptor.