Mar. 26, 2012 Nearly one in five people suffers from the
insidious and often devastating problem of chronic pain. That
the problem persists, and is growing, is striking given the many
breakthroughs in understanding the basic biology of pain over
the past two decades. A major challenge for treating chronic
pain is to understand why certain people develop pain while
others, with apparently similar disorders or injuries, do not.
An equally important challenge is to develop individualized
therapies that will be effective in specific patient
populations. Research published online in Nature Medicine points
to solutions to both challenges. A research team led by Prof.
Jeffrey Mogil of McGill University in Montreal and Prof. Michael
Salter of The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), affiliated
with the University of Toronto, has identified a major gene
affecting chronic pain sensitivity. The findings also suggest a
new approach to individualizing treatment of chronic pain. The
gene that the researchers identified e