Fruit flies used in Pain Treatment research.

Pain Treatment developed from testing fruit flies.

A new gene has been found which helps to control the sense of pain, may very well help develope new pain treatment for those who suffer chronic pain.

This gene linked to synaesthesia, a condition that leads to sensations of one kind being perceived as another. Words or numbers might be perceived as colours – the number 7 as the colour yellow – or colours could be heard as music.

Dr Greg Neely, a recently-appointed researcher at Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research, led the project with Professor Josef Penninger, while at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. The research is published in the current issue of Cell.

The research team screened the genome of fruit flies to investigate pain perception – in particular, the insects’ response to heat-induced pain.

After identifying 600 pain associated genes, the researchers honed in on one gene in particular, known as α2δ3, a gene shared with mice and people. The gene seemed to hold promise because it triggered the same cellular mechanisms as some existing painkillers.

American collaborators examined variations of the α2δ3 gene in people and found that one particular variation not only reduced sensitivity to acute pain, but also made patients much less likely to have chronic lower back pain.

Using functional MRI scanners to look at the brains of mice with mutant α2δ3 genes revealed that the gene controls the way heat pain signals are processed in the brain.  Read moreabout this pain treatment
htp://www.garvan.org.au/news-events/news/could-our-experience-of-pain-become-the-sound-of-music.html