Opioid Alternatives

Pain, whether intense or mild, brief or chronic, is detected by specialised sensory neurons that relay signals to the brain. When pain is bad or persistent enough to warrant painkillers, opioids are among the most effective at blocking this signal relay. But these drugs are highly addictive and, at high doses, can lower heart rate and breathing to a fatal degree. In looking for safer, non-addictive painkillers, scientists have screened thousands of existing drugs with various uses to find ones that act on sensory neurons (green) to reduce production of a known pain molecule, BH4 (magenta). Cells expressing BH4 appear magenta and/or white. In addition to some drugs with known analgesic effects, researchers found a schizophrenia drug that, at low doses, suppressed BH4 production. If this, or other BH4-lowering substances, can be further developed, it may be possible to have painkillers as powerful as opioids but without the devastating downsides.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

Writer

Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

Website

• Image from work by Shane J. F. Cronin and colleagues
• Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA and Institute of Molecular Biotechnology Austria (IMBA), Vienna, Austria
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Science Translational Medicine, August 2022