Before any surgery patients are given anesthesia to numb the portion of the body. That is to reduce the pain while performing operation. But for treatments, such as root canal of teeth, cosmetic surgeries, short acting anesthesia is used on patient. Short term anesthesia has couple of shortcomings such as effect last for few hours, impaired eye sight and unable to eat or talk.
A new development has been made by experts to subdue problems caused by short acting anesthetic. Scientists have developed a new molecule which can be used as fast acting pain relievers. The molecule, as demonstrated at Nature, works by getting activated when shed a beam of light on it. Activated molecule silences pain causing neurons. The molecule is then deactivated by light to terminate its effect. This new instant pain reliever is believed to be significant progress and likely to be most favorite pain reliever in general clinics.
General anesthetics bring numbness by blocking electrical signals generated by ending of nerve cells. The endings of nerve cells are medically known as Nociceptors. Nociceptors generate signals when cold, heat or mechanical pressure exceeds threshold limit. These generated signals are due to reach central nervous system which, after following numerous chain reactions, eventually results in feeling of pain.
Most commonly used anesthetic is Xylocaine. It works by blocking nociceptors from generating signals of pain. There are many other local anaesthetics also and all of them work in somewhat similar way. Problem with these current anesthetics is regardless of specific nociceptors they act on all the neurons. The new molecule based pain reliever method is selective in nature. With that being said, the method acts only on desired area of the body.
The development of new molecule known as Ammonium-azobenzene-quaternary ammonium is a result of combined efforts by scientists of California Uni and Ludwig-Maximilians Munich. Dr Richard Kramerof California and Dr Dirk Trauner are lead researcher of their respective group. The molecule changes its shape when exposed to green light and returns to its original shape when exposed to ultraviolet beam of light. The change in shape occurs within hundreds of part of a millisecond. This makes the molecule super fast acting pain reliever.
The trial of the new method has been successful.
