Brief Opioid Therapy May Eliminate Chronic Pain

According to team leaders, Ruth Drdla-Schutting and Jürgen Sandkühler along with their research team at the MedUni Vienna's Department of Neurophysiology (Centre for Brain Research); opioids can be used for more than temporary pain relief. Apparently, a strong enough dose can actually erase our memory traces of pain in the spinal cord.

At the most basic level, opioids bind to specific sites, called µ-opiate receptors (MOR), which suppresses the stimulation of pain. Characteristically, opioids are only known to alleviate pain while bound to these sites, therefore once treatment is ceased, pain resumes.

Typically, for chronic pain, opioids are administered continuously in moderate doses in order to achieve a permanent binding. This method may result in pain relief, however the treatment is long-term and the cause of pain cannot be eliminated.

To test their theory, that memory traces of pain can be erased with a large enough dose of opioids over a short period, “scientists recreated a surgical procedure in vivo in which pain fibres were stimulated under controlled conditions”.

"Although deep anaesthesia prevents any sensations of pain, we were able to reserve long-term synaptic potentiation in the spinal cord. Despite anaesthesia, there appears to be a memory trace for pain and a pain amplifier has engaged."

“Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a long-lasting enhancement in signal transmission between two neurons that results from stimulating them synchronously.”

Researchers administered high doses of intravenous opioids over a period of an hour and discovered that this completely removed the long-term potentiation. By doing so, this can reverse the cellular changes that cause pain memories. As such, this could actually rid the memory of the sensation that pain is amplified and longer lasting than in actuality and avoid the development chronic pain syndrome.

If proven to be an effective method of treatment, this could mean more than pain management for many people suffering with chronic pain. Current methods temporarily relieve symptoms of pain and typically require long-term opioid use. This type of treatment could greatly reduce the risk of a rapidly growing form of addiction.

Opioids Erase Memory Traces of Pain
Long-term potentiation
mu Opioid receptor

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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MENTAL HEALTH BLOG

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Stress and Depression Linked to Aging

Research reveals that people that experience recurring episodes of depression or those that are exposed to chronic stress have shorter telomeres in their white blood cells.

“A telomere is a region of repetitive DNA sequences at the end of a chromosome, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes.” Consequently, as we age, telomeres, the outermost part of the chromosome, shorten.

Moreover, research suggests that oxidative stress and inflammation can accelerate this process. The lengths of telomeres are suggestive of our biological age and have been associated with age-related diseases, unhealthy lifestyle, and longevity. Additionally, new studies now show that the shortening of telomeres is also linked to recurrent depression and exposure to chronic stress.

To demonstrate, researchers studied 91 patients with recurrent depression and 451 healthy patients by measuring the telomere length in their white blood cells.

Results showed that telomeres were shorter among the patients with recurrent depression. Also, by examining the participants' stress regulation using a dexamethasone suppression test, researchers again revealed that cortisol levels, indicative of chronic stress, were also associated with shorter telomeres in both depressed participants and healthy ones.

“The fact that depressed patients as a group have shorter telomere lengths compared to healthy individuals can be largely explained by the fact that more depressed people than healthy people have disturbed cortisol regulation, which underscores that cortisol regulation and stress play a major role in depressive disorders” says Mikael Wikgren, a doctoral candidate in the research group.

Accordingly, people could experience age-related complications much earlier in life; therefore properly treating and managing stress and/or depression may significantly impact the quality of life throughout the lifetime.

Depression and Chronic Stress Accelerates Aging
Telomere

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Remembering 9/11

Although most of us remember 9/11 through media coverage, a vast amount of victims and heroes now remain permanently scarred from witnessing the tragedy first-hand. Many are still physically suffering from their exposure to a mix of fibers, metals, concrete, noxious chemicals and gases. Yet many others are suffering mentally from their experiences on that day and the days following.

“Officially, as many as 10,000 firefighters, police officers and civilians who were at the disaster site here have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Other figures suggest more than 60,000 of the 409,000 who were at Ground Zero have shown elements of PTSD.”

In the past 10 years, there has been more research and attention given to the very real PTSD and the stigma of mental illness and seeking treatment has also diminished somewhat.

So today, many of us are not only remembering where we were or what we were doing on that day, but those that perished, lost their lives trying to save lives and those still affected.

For more on PTSD, visit this past post: http://www.mentalhealthblog.com/2008/09/ptsd-victims-of-911.html

Our faded memories of 9-11

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Infants Trained to Concentrate May Have Improved Abilities

New research suggests that infants can be trained to improve their concentration skills much earlier than once thought, which, unlike adults, can lead to improvements on unrelated tasks. Such abilities could lead to greater academic success, especially for those infants that may not be expected to thrive.

"Research suggests that differences in attentional control abilities emerge early in development and that children with better attentional control subsequently learn better in academic settings," said Sam Wass of the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck, University of London.

In other words, infants that can more readily concentrate on a specific object while ignoring other distractions are better equipped to learn. To test this theory, researchers observed 42 eleven-month-old infants on 5 occasions over 15 days. The cognitive abilities of each child were tested at the beginning and end of the 15 day period. Half of the babies watched TV, while the other half explored images on a computer screen. The latter half were tested to see how long they could watch a butterfly that flew only as long as they kept their eyes on it, meanwhile other distracting elements appeared on the screen.

Results showed that, “trained infants rapidly improved their ability to focus their attention for longer periods and to shift their attention from one point to another. They also showed improvements in their ability to spot patterns and small but significant changes in their spontaneous looking behavior while playing with toys”.

Consequently, the ability to stay focused on a task or to quickly shift attention can facilitate learning and social interactions, which can significantly impact abilities later in life.

Although the plasticity of the infant brain might allow training to occur at an earlier age, it remains a mystery whether infants might lose their novel skills just as quickly as they were learned.

Infants Trained to Concentrate Show Added Benefits

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