His pain and her pain may not be the same

Males and females process pain using different cells, a new study with mice suggests. The findings could help researchers develop the next generation of medications for chronic pain—the most prevalent health condition humans face. “Research has demonstrated that men and women have different sensitivity to pain and that more women suffer from chronic pain than men, but the assumption has always been that the wiring of how pain is processed is the same in both sexes,” says co-senior author Jeffrey Mogil, professor of pain studies at McGill University and director of the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain. “The realization that the biological basis for pain between men and women could be so fundamentally different raises important research and ethical questions if we want to reduce suffering.”


http://www.futurity.org/pain-sexes-personalized-medicine-950662/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds