Painkillers are a tricky thing. They can help you feel better when you’re in pain, but they can also make you feel too good and become addictive.
Some of them can even make you see things that aren’t really there, called hallucinations.
For a long time, scientists have been trying to make painkillers that only help with the pain, without the addiction and hallucinations. It’s been a tough challenge.
The Good and Bad of Opioid Receptors
When you take a painkiller like morphine or oxycodone, it activates something called mu-opioid receptors on nerve cells.
These receptors can stop the pain, but they also make you feel high, and this feeling can lead to addiction. Some illegal drugs like heroin and fentanyl do the same thing.
Another way to stop pain is by activating a different receptor, the kappa opioid receptor. Drugs that target the kappa receptor can also help with pain, but they might make you see things that aren’t there.
A Clue from the Salvia Plant
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine and the University of Health Sciences & Pharmacy in St. Louis have been studying a compound from the salvia plant.
This compound can activate the kappa receptor and cause hallucinations. They looked at this compound under a powerful microscope and found out how it binds to the receptor and causes these visions.
But the kappa receptor isn’t just one thing. It’s like a house with different doors, and different keys can open different doors.
The researchers found that only some of these doors lead to hallucinations. If they can make drugs that open the other doors, they might be able to stop pain without causing hallucinations.
The Hunt for the Right Key
When a key, or drug, opens a door on the kappa receptor, it causes certain signaling proteins, called G proteins, to start working.
There are seven different types of G proteins linked to the kappa receptor.
They’re all very similar, but the small differences between them might be the reason why some drugs cause hallucinations and others don’t.
The researchers believe they can figure out how to make drugs that only activate the G proteins that help with pain, without activating the ones that cause hallucinations.
If they’re successful, they might be able to create safer painkillers.
This could be a big deal because the current painkillers that work on the mu-opioid receptor have caused a lot of problems, including many deaths from overdoses.
If we can find safer alternatives, it could save many lives.
If you care about pain, please read studies about why cholesterol-lowering drug statins can cause muscle pain, and new device to treat pain without using drugs.
For more information about wellness, please see recent studies that common painkiller ibuprofen may strongly influence your liver, and scientists find new way to reduce neuropathy pain in diabetes.
The study was published in Nature.
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