By studying a Pakistani family that has a rare mutation that renders them unable to feel pain, a small company called Vertex Pharmaceuticals has developed a drug, that can be taken orally, that has shown significant reduction in pain in two different drug studies with no clear adverse side effects. The drug company found that 2 genes, called Nav1.7 and Nav1.8, are needed for the peripheral nervous system to transmit pain messages to the brain, their drug works by temporarily blocking the operation of Nav1.8 making it unable to manufacture the protein needed to transmit such pain messages. In two different clinical trials, one with 1073 people who were in pain and one with 1118, the patients reported a significant reduction in pain and they experienced less nausea and fewer headaches then with opioids, surprisingly even less than the control patients who received placebos. Because the drug targets the peripheral nervous system and has no obvious effect on the brain it is unlikely to cause addiction. Right now the drug is just called "VX-548" but if it's as good as it sounds and is approved by the FDA it will be a huge blockbuster and I'm sure they'll think of a catchier name.
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> pnm -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0sJgMg3KXuJwPdnoYVcFsvbV-yhHjai-e8g6p4Lvo%2B_Q%40mail.gmail.com.
