Author's Opening Note: This week's article will concentrate on some recent advances in the war on pain. And what new techniques are available to those that suffer intractable pain. I have presented several articles and items of interest along with their URLs for reference to the complete article.
Additionally -There is some discussion and few articles and URL references - on the recently identified Mycoplasma bacterium. Mycoplasma is a virus-sized bacterium that lives within the cellular environment - internal to a host cell.
INTRODUCTION
Following are excerpts, with commentary - from an article dated 20 April 1999. The title is "Canadian Medical Doctors locate the brain's pain cells." This article is written by CAROLYN ABRAHAM, a medical reporter for the Ontario Globe and Mail, in Canada. The source of this article is at present - unknown to the author, to be supplied when known. The author received the article via email. From here on all author comments appear in italic font face.
Recently many researchers have been refining a technique of obviating pain at the location of the pain centers in the brain. The method of using a fine probe that is inserted into the brain to either temporarily stun or to kill - the pain centers is used to alleviate the more extreme cases of intractable pain.
A Canadian team of neuroscientists is the first to discover cells in the brain that process pain, unleashing a host of new possibilities for relieving suffering, the Toronto Western Hospital announced yesterday. The doctors detected a clutch of individual neurons, buried in the front end of a crescent-shaped region in the brain associated with anxiety and depression, firing a rapid succession of electrical impulses or falling completely silent in response to physical pain. They pinpointed the neurons' location while performing brain surgery on 11 patients who were fully awake and able to communicate while a hair-fine probe reached deep into the cortex of their brains. And because the neurons responded to various pain stimuli, including heat, cold and pinpricks, the scientists suspect the cells are involved in a wide range of pain sensations, including backaches and migraines.
"This is the first conclusive evidence in humans of cells that actually mediate pain, and they represent a potential target for all types of therapy," said Andres Lozano, a neurosurgeon at the University of Toronto
