Researchers study hot peppers as anesthesia in surgery

William Atkins
Thursday, 04 October 2007 20:34

Science - Health

Chemicals in hot peppers have been found to deaden only pain-sensing nerve cells, making for a better way to provide local anesthetics that do not numb muscles, and make the patient unconscious during surgery and drowsy afterwards.        

Medical researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School found that certain active chemicals within hot peppers do not affect neurons (nerve cells) that cause temporary numbness in muscles lasting well after the surgery. The hot peppers only affect pain-sensing neurons, so remove any pain caused by the surgery.

They experimented on rats and found that the chemicals in hot peppers, what is called capsaicin, works to alleviate pain within them. They are confident that when tests begin on humans, hopefully in a few years, the same positive result will occur.

Normally, the protein TRPV1 (vanilloid receptor subtype 1), which is involved in the transmission and control of pain, consists of a channel where molecules traverse, unless a membrane gate prevents such motion. Capsaicin, however, is able to open the gate and enter pain-sensing nerve cells. When the researchers used capsaicin on the rats, they included QX-314, an inactive ingredient in a common local anesthetic called lidocaine, which normally cannot enter the nerve cells. However, with the introduction of capsaicin, the lidocaine was able to enter the nerve cells and block their electrical activity and, thus, remove pain without affecting nerve cells that control muscles and consciousness and other such functions.

The article entitled “Inhibition of nociceptors by TRPV1-mediated entry of impermeant sodium channel blockers” appears in the October 4, 2007 issue of the journal Nature (449, 607-610). Its authors are Alexander M. Binshtok, Bruce P. Bean, and Clifford J. Woolf.

Binshtok, Bean, and Woolf think that hot peppers could be used one day to replace traditional local anesthesia in such medical procedures as dental tooth extractions, joint and knee surgeries, and childbirth, along with being used for the treatment of chronic pain and, even, severe itchiness.

In fact, Dr. Woolf states, “Eventually, this method could completely transform surgical and post-surgical analgesia, allowing patients to remain fully alert without experiencing pain or paralysis. In fact, the possibilities seem endless.”