On the Verge of Discovering a New Pain Killer
Just imagine not being able to feel any physical pain. The good part is, of course, that you can’t feel any pain. The bad part is that you can bleed to death and probably wouldn’t even think of going to a hospital.
Voltage-gated sodium channels are essential in pain perception. A gene called SCN9A is responsible for creating these channels so that when something painful strikes the skin, these voltage-gated sodium channels can open up and stimulate sensory neurons to send a pain signal to the brain.
A six-year-old Pakistani boy is a street performer who can stick knives in his body day in and day out and still be perfectly fine without fainting. He posses a rare genetic mutation that leaves gene SCN9A functionless, which in turn leaves him incapable of feeling any pain. He has no other defects or abnormalities; everything else in his body is perfectly fine. This turned on a light bulb in Dr. Geoffrey Woods’ head. He had been studying this SCN9A gene at the University of Cambridge for quite a while now and was linking this idea to the morphine receptor we possess in our bodies. The gears in Dr. Woods’ brain were grinding until he came up with a wonderful idea. Just as this SCN9A gene is blocked in the Pakistani street performer, he could temporarily block it in patients during surgery and other procedures. Dr. Woods studied this boy and six of his young relatives, who also had the mutation in their bodies. This would be better than using Morphine, which can cause addiction and drowsiness, or Celebrex, which can cause heart damage. Many researchers continue on this idea to try to find a healthy and effective way of temporarily blocking the SCN9A gene. This discovery will lead to a very helpful pain killer in medical settings in the recent future.
-Amy Shah
