Pain relief - too hot to handle?
For years the mainstay for long term pain relief lay in the class of drugs known as opioids (or morphine and methadone) and no other option was even close to making it close to overtaking them in the pain relief stakes. Problem is, about 5-15% of people don’t respond to these drugs and live in chronic constant pain. Enter the humble chilli pepper - or more accurately the more potent cousin of the chilli pepper. Turns out the self same chemical (aka resiniferatoxin or RTX) that feels like it’s burning a hole in your mouth is the same one that will selectively burn out/poison nerve cells that are responsible for heat-related or inflammatory pain and therefore effectively taking out the ’signals’ to the brain to ‘feel’ the pain. The beauty of this chemical is that it’s selective in what nerve cells it targets, only hitting the necessary ones and leaving the useful ones eg like the one that lets you feel sharp pain when you trod on something pointy intact.
Studies have been conducted on dogs with terminal cancer and RTX has been injected into their spines with startling results. Owners have reported their dogs who were in horrible pain from bone cancer suddenly starting to weight bear on their ‘painful’ legs again. Whilst all the dogs eventually succumbed to the cancer, their owners reported weeks-months of playing and increased activity which is a far cry from the usual pain ridden sub existence in someone dying slowly from the cancer.
The only setback seems to be that the drug needs to be injected like an epidural (eg for pregnant women) and it seems to have the habit of burning BEFORE it deadens the pain and therefore the subject has to be under general anesthetic for the injection to take place. A side effect that occured in most of the dogs in the study was that they woke up after the injection panting heavily for hours after - supposedly they were experiencing the flush similar to what people experience after eating hot peppers. Presumably this would be translated to humans sweating it out for hours until after the drug has taken its effect. Researchers are hopeful and excited because of initial trials.
The challenge now remains in finding a pharmaceutical company who’s willing to take up the funding and final production of the drug for general consumption which may prove difficult as the potential market for this drug is small.