Pain is a part of life. Often, a few painkillers and some rest are enough to soothe the scraped knees of childhood and the aches and sprains of adulthood. But for some, pain is not as fleeting or as easily dismissed. The pain from cancer, chemotherapy, arthritis, AIDS, and other diseases can be unrelenting and incapacitating.
Some individuals even experience constant, bone-crushing pain for no apparent reason.
For many of these chronic pain sufferers, even morphine doesn't relieve the agony. To answer that question, researchers in the laboratory and the clinic are probing the mechanisms that underlie both acute and chronic pain. The key to understanding pain may lie in identifying the proper molecular targets, says Lorne Mendell of the State University of New York in Stony Brook. The key may lie in identifying the proper molecular targets, says Lorne Mendell of the State University of New York in Stony Brook. Some of these channels and receptors appear to be unique to the neurons that transmit pain messages from a paper-cut pinkie finger through the spinal cord and into the brain.