Why Are Naked Mole Rats Invulnerable To Pain?

Naked mole rats are way tougher than they seem to be. For decades, scientists have been trying to investigate the many extraordinary traits of naked mole rats that can live up to 32 years, are impervious to cancer and barely affected by pain.

Now, researchers from Germany might have finally investigated how these scrotum-looking rodents achieve at least one of these traits, by recognizing the evolutionary changes that make them invulnerable to pain, but sensitive enough to evade injury. This identification could help scientists treat people suffering from chronic pain each day, according to Science Alert.

"We think evolution has selected for this tweak just subtly enough so that the pain signalling becomes non-functional, but not strong enough that it becomes a danger for the animal," explained lead author Gary R. Lewin, from the Max-Delbruck Centre for Molecular Medicine in Berlin.

To be specific, naked mole rats aren't totally immune to pain since that could actually be quiet dangerous as pain alerts us about the injuries we suffer, according to a news research by the University of Calgary. Instead, these small creatures seem to ignore certain types of inflammations that other animals, including humans, find painful.

Let us consider a case of sunburn. We experience a burning sensation, called thermal hyperalgesia, when hot water touches the sunburn. This simply means that our skin has become increasingly sensitive to pain caused due to damaged nociceptors, the nerves that sense and tell our bodies about injuries. This makes the water feel hotter than it actually is.

Now picture a sunburned naked mole rat. It would not face any issues of increased sensitivity because of an evolutionary shift on the molecular level that lets these creatures feel just fine in situations where other living creatures would be in agony due to increased inflammation.

Evolutionary mutation in the receptors of naked mole rats appears to reduce their pain to just one-third as compared to the pain experienced by other rodents. If the researchers are able to fully understand how this system of dulled pain works, it could open up new arenas of research to develop pain management for human in the future.