The Brain Can Be Trained to Reduce Pain

There may be a high-tech way to teach people to handle chronic pain, scientists report.

They’re not talking about a sophisticated device that erases pain. Instead, they used medical technology to help patients learn how to develop mental coping devices that would allow them to train their brains to cope with, and reduce their experience of pain.

The strategy is in its early days, so it’s not ready for widespread use. Thorough tests are needed, the researchers note.

They describe their work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Coping With Pain

The study included 36 healthy students from Stanford University and 12 people in their 30s with chronic pain.

The pain patients had largely had little relief from other pain treatments (including painkillers and counseling).

Those who didn’t have chronic pain received pain exposure through heat applied to the palm of their left hand during the experiment.

The Golden Rules of Processing Pain

Drug that Can Mutate Aids Virus to Self-Destruct

HIV
This microscopic image in false color shows the HIV virus up close. Famous for its ability to evolve and evade drugs designed against it, HIV appears vulnerable to a new drug that speeds up the mutation process. It takes time and may not work for all patients, but early clinical trials are promising.

HIV is notorious for its ability to mutate and evade drugs designed to destroy it. Now scientists are testing a new drug that actually speeds up that rate of change in the hope that the deadly virus will mutate itself to death.

"The HIV virus is so dependent on mutation that it really lives on the edge of existence," said John Reno, Chief Operating Officer for Koronis Pharmaceuticals, the company developing a drug called KP-1461. "But we figured that if we could increase this mutation rate, [HIV] might finally fall off that edge."

KP-1461 is a mutagen, meaning it encourages mutation, and has been in development for several years by the scientists at Koronis Pharmaceuticals.

One-Eyed Kitten : Cyclops Kitten

A photo of a one-eyed kitten named Cy drew more than a little skepticism when it turned up on various websites, but medical authorities have a name for the bizarre condition.

"Holoprosencephaly" causes facial deformities, according to the US National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

In the worst cases, a single eye is located where the nose should be, according to the institute's Web site.

Traci Allen says the kitten she named Cy, short for Cyclops, was born on December 28 with the single eye and no nose.