Doctors believe that specific skin receptors can help filter and reduce pain.
In a time when new methods of treating pain have reached a standstill, researchers in the UCI School of Medicine believe they have made a breakthrough that may change the face of future pain management. Dr. Daniele Piomelli, an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology at UCI, has been researching the effects of two specific types of receptor proteins within the skin that act as an initial filter of pain. According to Piomelli, the receptor proteins block certain types of pain at the origin of the injury, before the transmission of pain, through the central nervous system, to the brain. If it is harmful enough, it will be communicated as pain. The need for pain, according to Piomelli, is a simple concept of self-preservation.