Health Personal Measures

According to researchers from University of California, San Diego, neuropathic pain in HIV patients can be relieved by using medicinal marijuana.

In the study, the researchers included those 28 HIV patients whose nuropathic pain wasn’t relieved by opiates or other pain killers. The researchers noticed that the patients who smoked medicinal marijuana reported significant relief in their pain compared with those who were given a placebo.
The University of California Center for Medical Cannabis Research (CMCR) sponsored the study and it has been published online in Neuropsychopharmacology.

(more…)

“Migraines” are a fact of life for millions of people. It attacks in the form of severe headache which strike without any warning affecting the household activities.
Once thought as one of the effective treatments for the migraines, the epilepsy drug ‘oxcarbazepine’ (Trileptal) does not seem to hold the same good place now.

In a recent study, research was done to see the effectiveness of this drug on treating the migraines. No differences were found in the symptoms and conditions of the people taking ‘oxcarbazepine’ or ‘placebo’.

(more…)

Some of the specific receptors located in our skin, joints, and other internal organs are responsible for sensing the painful stimuli in our bodies. Receptive signals are relayed by these specialized nerve fibers relay which are generated at the periphery of the brain. Here the pain turns in to conscious stage. Hanns Ulrich Zeilhofer, Professor at the ‘Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences’ at ETH Zurich, and at the ‘Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology’ of the ‘University of Zurich’.

The spinal cord is placed at such a position that works as a pain filter. It assures that the pain is not felt just by feeble stimuli like touching. The ‘inhibitory nerve cells’ that are located in the spinal dorsal horn perform this function. The spinal dorsal horn releases the’ molecule-amino butyric acid (GABA)’at the points of contacts between the specialized nerve cells. It is also called the “synapses”.GABA subsequently causes activation in the chloride channels over these cells and these nerve cells then start relaying the ‘pain signals’ to the brain.

(more…)