People can experience chronic pain at any stage of life. However, we do know that chronic pain patients tend to feel worse with age. The older they get, the more they hurt. Until recently, medical science has not understood this phenomenon. But a new study sheds light on what could be behind it.
A group of researchers from Stanford University believe they have uncovered what they are calling “zombie cells” in the peripheral nervous systems of chronic pain patients. These cells are essentially senescent neurons that no longer multiply. However, they also don’t die. They gradually build up in the peripheral nervous system where they continue sending inflammatory signals to the brain.
Inflammatory Signals and Pain
Inflammatory signals are closely associated with pain perception. Even where there is no injury or disease, a person’s brain could perceive pain based only on inflammatory signals. So it stands to reason that any increase in inflammatory signals would lead to a correlating increase in the pain experience.
If all of this is proved true by future research, it would explain why most of the therapies we rely on to treat chronic pain become gradually less effective as a patient ages. The treatments are targeting the wrong things.
To demonstrate that theory, the researchers induced chronic pain in laboratory mice. They then targeted the zombie cells with a drug designed to eliminate them. It worked. A significant number of the mice responded positively to the drug therapy.
Pain Perception Isn’t Uniform
What the Stanford University researchers are proposing makes a lot of sense in light of the fact that pain perception is not uniform. As the pain medicine doctors at Texas-based Lone Star Pain Medicine explain, patients perceive pain differently. Five patients all experiencing the same type of low back pain will report different experiences in terms of pain severity, what the pain feels like, and so forth.
How their brains perceive pain is directly related to the signals being sent through their nervous systems. And because every human body is different, the signals are not uniform. Thus, pain perception isn’t uniform either.
Targeting zombie cells in order to eliminate their corresponding inflammation signals seems like a reasonable way to address chronic pain that only gets worse as a patient ages. Lone Star doctors have access to a number of other treatments designed to work in a similar fashion.
Blocking Pain Signals
Treatments like facet joint injections and radiofrequency ablation are designed to interrupt pain signals so that they never reach the brain. Where there are no pain signals, there is no perception of pain.
Note that neither eliminating inflammation signals nor blocking pain signals does anything to correct the source of a patient’s pain. But when it comes to chronic pain, the source is often unknown or cannot be corrected by any reasonable means. Blocking pain signals is the next best means of treatment.
Getting back to the Stanford University research, it is considered critically important because it could lead to better treatment for aging adults who don’t want to undergo surgery or continue taking prescription pain medications. A procedure that blocks pain signals or eliminates zombie cells would be a welcome alternative.
Obviously, the Stanford research does not equate to a drug ready to be manufactured and submitted for FDA approval. But it does set the stage for future research that could revolutionize how we treat chronic pain in older adults. If we can reduce chronic pain simply by eliminating zombie cells that do nothing but trigger a pain reaction, doing so would seem like a huge win.