New Drugs Could Relieve Neuropathy Pain

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After more than a decade of study, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital are close to developing a new class of non-narcotic drugs that relieve chronic nerve pain by targeting a protein that enhances pain and inflammation.

Their findings, reported in the journal Neuron, could lead to new treatments for diabetic peripheral neuropathy, post-herpetic neuralgia, and inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. Current treatments provide meaningful pain relief in only about 15 percent of patients.

"Most pain medications that have been tested in the past decade have failed in Phase II human trials despite performing well in animal models," notes Clifford Woolf, MD, PhD, director of Boston Children's F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center and a co-senior investigator on the study. "Here, we used human genetic findings to guide our search from the beginning."

Previous research by Woolf and his colleagues found that people with variants of the gene for GTP cyclohydrolase (GCH1)...

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URL: 
http://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2015/6/19/new-drug-could-relieve-neuropathy-pain