Human body always suffer from pains through the life, sometimes from getting hit while playing or sometimes accidently. Scientists now found a protein which alarms human body when it feels pain and also helps to get rid of this.

This protein is named as Nav1.7. It usually sits on the pain-sensing nerves and sends alert to the brain when the body encounters pain. Recent experiments in rodent cells reveal that Nav1.7 also triggers up the pain-relieving molecules. These findings first appeared in the Nature journal.

Neuroscientist of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso’s Dr. Munmun Chattopadhyay said in a statement,”This is very interesting research”. Those findings also suggest that when opiates were given as painkillers then Nav1.7 reduces the usages of those painkillers to avoid the side effects of opiates.

According to ScienceNews, the new research solved the frustrating puzzles of pharmaceutical companies and researchers. Some people have evolved with a rare gene mutation of making Nav1.7 which makes them feel no pain at all. Scientists are planning to make a new drug which can block the Nav1.7 activity if it’s become possible then some kind of pain would be totally eliminated.

A neuroscientist at the University Hospital Cologne in Germany, Dr. Tim Hucho thinks that the project looks so simple but, its is not really simple. Last year, researchers reported that those mice and humans who have nonfunctional Nav1.7 not only feel no pain but also produce a large number of pain-relieving opioids than a normal person could produce. A woman with the rare pain-eradicating mutation was given opiate blocker naloxone and she felt pain for the first time in her life.

Dr. Hucho and his team suggest that Nav1.7 is just like a see-saw in the playground because it has two different kinds of characteristics. That means it has both pain relieving and pain promoting features, as seen in rats and mice. When the pain-promoting side is dialed down, the pain-relieving side becomes more dialed up than usual, and cells make more of their in-house opioids.

When the human body takes opioids, it gets used to them. So, later it needs to increase the dosage to have an effect. Rather than pushing the one side of the seesaw to stop the pain, researchers planned to move the axis towards the center. It will be much easier to maintain the balance.However, more research is needed to get into a conclusion but, rather than taking opiate drugs alone it will be better to take drugs with Nav1.7 blocker.

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