Study Shows How Morphine Can Worsen Pain Management

Folks who happen to experience severe pain may eventually be prescribed to turn to Morphine for needed relief. They come in many types and would depend on what is prescribed by a doctor.

While its intent could be handy, there are side effects that come with it. That includes constipation, drowsiness and feeling sick that would eventually require doctors to prescribe more medicine to address the occurrences.

From that alone, one can see the issues that morphine brings which come in different forms (i.e. tablets, liquid medicine, sachets or via injection). And now, a study published via the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reveals that morphine intake can more than double the duration of pain and eventually become long-term.

“Prior studies have looked at the effect morphine has on pain sensitivity short term, but in this study we looked at the weeks and months after morphine use,” said Dr. Peter Grace, the author of the study and an associate from the University of Adelaide Research. The study was led by Professor Linda Watkins at the University of Colorado Boulder.

According to him, the opioid painkiller activates spinal immune cells that trigger inflammatory responses. What morphine does is that it transitions pain into a chronic state which eventually makes it severe and longer lasting.

The study made the discoveries from rats. Rats with chronic nerve pains were treated with morphine for five days and researchers found that the rodents experienced prolonged pain sensitivity over their counterparts.

“Our results add weight to the growing body of science suggesting that treatment with opioids such as morphine may in fact be a contributor to people’s chronic pain,” adds Dr. Grace. “

While the findings may be alarming, the good news is that researchers were able to find a way to switch off the pain-amplifying mechanism. The solution comes in the form of a technology known as the Designer Receptor Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs or “DREADD”.

“By blocking these receptors, we’re preventing the immune response from kicking in, enabling the painkilling benefits of morphine to be delivered without resulting in further chronic pain,” said Dr. Grace on “DREADD”.

Seeing that doctors have been prescribing additional medicine to alleviate the side effects, “DREADD” could eventually be a prescription though researchers would need to dig deeper and determine if it would render similar side-effects on other opiate-based drugs such as oxycodone and fentanyl, and for other types of chronic pain.