TB medication offers pain relief

Scientists have been searching for a new way to help people that suffer from chronic pain
and they may have found something. There is this drug that is an antibiotic, called D-
Cycloserine, that was used nearly half a century ago to treat tuberculosis. And while the
researchers were experimenting with rats and this drug they discovered that the drug
actually reduced chronic-pain-like symptoms in the rats. A. Vania Apkarian of
Northwestern University in Evanston, I11 and his team of colleagues were experimenting
with chronic pain by cutting tissue and a major nerve in some rats paws. They waited
some time and the tissue healed but the major nerve did not, so this caused a chronic pain.
The researches gave D-Cycloserine orally to some rats, and in others, they injected the
drug into the medial prefrontal cortex, (the brain region that according to the scientists is
involved, in people, in emotional responses to chronic pain). Both of the treatments
improved some of the rats ability to support pressure on the injured paws. The team
repeated twice daily the oral doses for two weeks and longer, and it had a better effect.
However, the injections on those parts of the brain did not help the rats very much. The
scientists said that this supported their theory that learned emotional responses centered in
the media prefrontal cortex play a key role in the experience of chronic or neuropathic
pain. Apkarian and his team are planning to test this drug in people that suffer from
chronic pain, Apkarian says: We think a large component of the suffering is enhanced by
the (medial prefrontal cortex).