What is it about?
Acute pain affects a number of people worldwide. Current medications including the highly addictive opioids such as morphine are related to a number of side-effects, which restricts patient compliance. Opioids are also a common drug of abuse. We report in this paper a novel compound, ferulic acid, which is structurally similar to the active component of a Chinese herb used for rheumatic pain. Our compound showed suppression of acute pain induced in hind-paw of mice, and did not show any dependency or motor function dysfunctions. It was shown to bind to adenosine receptors, which are a new class of receptors being discovered for synthesizing pain medicines. In summary, our study provides a structural class of compounds which can be further investigated to reduce pain as well as provide an alternative non-opioid therapy.
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Why is it important?
With an increasing problem of opioid epidemic, our study provides an avenue to the synthesis and exploration of a novel class of compounds for acute and chronic pain suppression.
Perspectives
This project has been a new venture in the field of pain research which initiated due to a random search on the structure of some compounds which were being synthesized in Chemistry department. The collaborative team with experts in chemical synthesis, pharmacologist, pain researcher, and drug-receptor modeling makes this a strong research endeavour.
SURABHI CHANDRA
University of Nebraska System
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ferulic acid dimer as a non-opioid therapeutic for acute pain, Journal of Pain Research, June 2018, Dove Medical Press,
DOI: 10.2147/jpr.s161161.
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