Regarding "chronic pain," which is a pain that lasts for a long time after a nerve is injured due to a disease such as banded rash, a group such as Kyushu University has found that some of the immune cells of mice have a function to relieve this pain. I announced that.
This research was published in the scientific journal "Science" by a group of Professor Makoto Tsuda of Kyushu University.
Of the "chronic pain", "neuropathic pain", in which pain continues after a nerve is injured due to a disease such as herpes zoster or injury, is said to be difficult to treat because analgesics may not work in some cases.
In the group, we focused on the fact that the pain naturally weakens in mice even if the nerve is damaged, and when we investigated it in detail, we found immune cells called "microglia cells" that partially changed around the nerve when the pain was relieved. I found that it was increasing.
Microglia cells were previously thought to be one of the causes of pain, but the group confirmed that a special protein made from these altered cells has a pain-relieving effect.
Professor Tsuda, who conducted the research, said, "We found that the cells around the nerves are involved in the mechanism of pain relief. In the future, we would like to develop effective therapeutic agents for pain for which morphine does not work." I was talking.