Lifestyle and Other Changes Might Alter Pain Sensitivity, Study Says

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Lifestyle and Other Changes Might Alter Pain Sensitivity, Study Says
Yahoo Contributor Network
By Vonda J. Sines  47 minutes ago



For many people across the globe, suffering from chronic pain is a problem with no solution. However, scientists in the United Kingdom have found that lifestyle and environmental changes could alter an individual's sensitivity to pain.

Findings of the study, headed by Dr. Jordana Bell of King's College London, contradicted the prevailing belief that pain sensitivity is largely inflexible, according to Medical News Today. A basic premise in pain management is that people who have greater sensitivity to pain have an elevated risk of developing chronic pain.

Results from the research appeared in journal Nature Communications. They suggest that it might be possible to treat pain sensitivity with drugs that turn off certain genes.

Researchers conducted their investigation as part of a fairly new field. The National Human Genome Research Institute describes epigenetics as an emerging area of science that studies heritable alterations that occur when genes activate and deactivate without a change of an organism's underlying DNA sequence.

The American Academy of Pain Medicine says chronic pain affects 1.5 billion people worldwide, 100 million of them in the United States. Estimates on lost U.S. work productivity range from $297 billion to $336 billion.

For the UK study, the team selected 25 pairs of identical twins, individuals who share 100 percent of their genes. Scientists believe that any changes they develop in gene expression must be the results of processes like epigenetics that link to changes in an individual's environment and lifestyle.

They tested subjects' level of pain sensitivity by applying a heat probe to the arm of each one and had them press a button when they sensed pain. This established respective pain thresholds.

From subjects' blood samples, the scientists found 5.2 million locations that reflected epigenetic changes that had occurred across the whole genome. They compared these with those of 50 subjects who were unrelated to figure out exactly which parts of the genome bore epigenetic changes related to high and low sensitivity to pain. They were able to locate nine genes related to pain sensitivity that differed between the individuals in a set of twins.

Researchers already knew that the gene TRPA1 was related to pain sensitivity. A target for developing painkillers, it emerged as the gene with the most epigenetic alterations. Only a small chemical change can act like a dimmer switch for how the gene expresses itself.

The realization that pain sensitivity is not so inflexible as scientists once thought and can be affected by factors like environment and lifestyle points to the most important potential impact of the study: the possibility of using drugs to switch a gene on and off, changing a person's sensitivity to pain. For individuals who suffer from chronic pain, this could lead to much more effective treatment to relieve their discomfort.


http://news.yahoo.com/lifestyle-other-changes-might-alter-pain-sensitivity-study-225100013.html