Share on PinterestA drug-free implant could help relieve pain from nerve injury, animal experiments show. Paul Linse/Getty Images
• Researchers created a rubber band-like device that relieves pain by wrapping around nerves and cooling them down.
• The device reduces pain sensitivity in rat models of sciatic nerve injury, offering a non-opioid alternative for pain relief.
• The researchers say that more research is needed before the device can enter human trials.
Although opioids carry a high risk for abuse, due to their high efficacyTrusted Source in treating pain, they continue to be widely in use.
Research, however, shows that 21- 29% of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them. Meanwhile, opioid misuse following surgery occurs in up to 1.8 in every 1,000Trusted Source people who underwent thoracic and spinal fusion operations.
In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recorded an estimated 100,306Trusted Source drug overdose deaths in the United States from April 2020 to April 2021, up by 28.5% from the previous year.
The development of new non-addictive pain medications could help curb opioid misuse.
Recently, researchers developed a small, biocompatible implant device that wraps around nerves and relieves pain by cooling them down.
“The device physically resembles a rubber band, but with capabilities in cooling targeted regions of peripheral nerves to block the propagation of pain signals,” Dr. John A. Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering and neurological surgery at Northwestern University, and lead author of the study, told Medical News Today.
“The materials naturally resorb into the body after a period of use, timed to address [the] pain that patients experience during recovery from a surgical operation,” he said.
The study appears in Science.
How the device works
Studies indicate that local cooling of peripheral nerves to under 15 degrees Celsius blocks neural signaling. Other studies have shown how the effectiveness of nerve cooling can be improved as a potentially non-addictive, reversible method for long-term pain relief.
However, current devices to cool nerves rely on rigid, bulky systems that are unable to provide localized cooling.
