Topic: Stoic or just lucky? Gene affects pain: study

[Orstio]

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2006-10-23T190353Z_01_N23377781_RTRUKOC_0_US-SCIENCE-PAIN.xml&src=rss

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who say they are less sensitive to pain than others could be right. Researchers said on Monday they had found a gene that appears to affect how people feel discomfort.

Tests in rats showed that blocking increased activity of the gene after nerve injury or inflammation could prevent the development of chronic pain, a finding that points to possible ways to develop new pain drugs.

And studies in volunteers showed that about a quarter of them had the genetic variant that protects them from pain somewhat, and 3 percent carried two mutated copies that make them exceptionally insensitive to pain, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Medicine.

"This is a completely new pathway that contributes to the development of pain," said Dr. Clifford Woolf of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, who led the research.