While those who suffer from the type of condition that makes their bodies ache constantly are tired of hearing that it's all in their heads; however, new research has shown that there might ultimately be some truth to this statement, as it's come out that chronic pain and dopamine are closely related to one another.
For years, dopamine has been dubbed the "pleasure hormone" due to the fact that one of its functions sees it activated during moments of pleasure, which The Guardian claims has given the neurotransmitter something a bad name; however, it has a whole array of other functions, apparently including chronic pain's dopamine effects.
Besides chronic pain's dopamine functions, this neurotransmitter is associated with cognition, movement and general reward-motivated behavior.
According to UT Dallas, researchers from the city's University of Texas recently published a paper in The Journal of Neuroscience about chronic pain and dopamine, where they found that removing a collection of neurons containing the chemical could diminish chronic pain.
Medical News Today reports that researchers came to the chronic pain dopamine conclusion by studying mice: the team researched the path of pain signals that went back and forth from brain to spinal cord in mice - and found that removing the A11 cells, which are heavy on dopamine, could selectively lower chronic pain in the rodents.
According to Gazette Review, neurons will send pain signals to the brain even if there's no injury, which is an ailment that those with chronic pain will deal with often - and the new findings suggest that the A11 cells might be responsible for this, as it seems like these neurons actually work with chronic pain instead of the acute one.
As research progresses on this subject, it would allow scientists to eventually create medication that targets these cells for treatment of this ailment, making chronic pain's dopamine discovery a possible key in improving the patients' quality of life.
