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End Pain Forever
Article

End Pain Forever

How a Single Gene Could Become a Volume Knob for Human Suffering

Wired, 2017

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Hot Topic

Recommendation

Award-winning reporter Erika Hayasaki tells an inspiring story of human suffering and scientific triumph. She talks to people with genetic abnormalities that skew their responses to pain. Their lives are difficult, but their contribution to science has been great. She profiles the various teams around the world researching medications that will target the pain gene. With all this competition, it’s just a matter of time before one of them finds a viable solution. getAbstract recommends Hayasaki’s article to anyone who would like a safe alternative to conventional painkillers.

Take-Aways

  • Chronic pain is common, but it’s difficult to manage with medication.
  • Pain expert Stephen Waxman found that a particular sodium channel, Nav1.7, plays an important role in pain sensation.
  • Normally, neuron channels should only open to let sodium ions transmit their message of pain to the brain and then close when the stimulus stops.

About the Author

Erika Hayasaki is an associate professor of literary journalism at the University of California, Irvine and author of The Death Class: A True Story About Life.