Imagine dealing with pain that never seems to go away. This is the reality for many people who suffer from something called neuropathic pain.
Neuropathic pain is a type of chronic pain that affects up to one in ten people around the world. It’s not just a regular headache or body ache – it’s a pain that’s caused by issues in our nervous system itself.
These problems can come from several diseases, such as diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, or from treatments like chemotherapy.
Treating neuropathic pain can be tough. Current drugs, like certain antidepressants and anticonvulsants, can have bad side effects, aren’t liked by many patients, and don’t work quickly or for everyone.
Using opioids, another type of drug, can lead to dependency and addiction.
A New Approach to Chronic Pain Treatment
But there’s some good news. Scientists from Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, along with teams from the Icahn School of Medicine, Columbia University, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, may have found a way to better treat neuropathic pain.
They used experiments to look into how an unusual antidepressant, named tianeptine, works.
Their findings, which have been published in the scientific journal Neuropsychopharmacology, show that tianeptine might offer fast and long-lasting pain relief without a high risk of addiction.
“We hope this revives the potential of using tianeptine for the treatment of chronic pain and associated conditions, such as anxiety and depression,” said Professor Venetia Zachariou from Boston University, who led the study.
“By further refining this molecule, we could arrive at a pain treatment that is more effective, fast-acting, and has a mild side effect profile.”
Looking Closer at Tianeptine
The researchers used experiments to compare tianeptine to another antidepressant, desipramine.
They focused on a type of pain called persistent mechanical allodynia, which happens when the sciatic nerve, a large nerve in the lower part of the body, gets damaged.
To understand how tianeptine works, the team looked at changes in gene expression in a part of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens.
This area of the brain plays a role in motivation, addiction, and pain perception. By looking at which genes the drug affects, the researchers could identify which pain-related genes tianeptine could counteract.
Tianeptine’s Pain-Relieving Properties
What they found was promising. Tianeptine had a strong pain-relieving effect that stayed even after the drug was no longer in the body.
This suggests that the drug might change how certain genes linked to pain work. They also found that tianeptine worked more quickly than other antidepressants.
Tianeptine is already being used in some parts of Europe, Asia, and Latin America to treat depression, asthma, and anxiety. But because of the way tianeptine works, it’s not yet approved in the U.S.
“Several studies have shown that the abuse potential of tianeptine is substantially lower than other currently abused opioids such as oxycodone.
Furthermore, tianeptine does not appear to cause tolerance, so the dose does not need to be increased drastically over time, which contributes to physical dependence and addiction,” said Zachariou and Alex Serafini, another researcher involved in the study.
Looking Forward
While more research is needed, this study adds to growing evidence that tianeptine could be a good option for treating conditions like chronic pain.
If future studies continue to show positive results, it might just be the hope that chronic pain sufferers have been waiting for.
If you care about pain, please read studies about why people with red hair respond differently to pain than others, and what you need to know about chest pain.
For more information about pain, please see recent studies about how to manage your back pain, and results showing Medical cannabis may help reduce arthritis pain, back pain.
The study was published in Neuropsychopharmacology.
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