Science’s understanding of human pain remains simplistic, with no safe and effective analgesia for chronic pain despite decades of animal experiments, according to an article published in international peer-reviewed journal Neuroimage, collaboratively authored by leading pain experts and the Dr Hadwen Trust. Advanced non-animal technologies such as human brain imaging could offer greater hope for a pain-free future for people living with diseases such as osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia.
Thousands of pain experiments on animals are conducted every year across the world, including purposely inflicting pain on conscious animals such as rodents, sheep and primates. Such experiments are conducted mainly on rodents in Britain by drug companies like AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline as well as universities across the country. As well as being unethical, animal models of pain are simplistic and fail to replicate the multi-dimensional experience of human pain with its complex genetic, biological and psychological aspects.
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Non-invasive human neuroimaging technologies are relatively new but they are being rapidly developed, and their capabilities are improving with lightning speed. Advanced techniques such as fMRI, PET and MEG are already revolutionising medical research by identifying the brain areas involved in human pain processing, those affected by analgesics, and the duration and nature of these effects.
“It’s clear that experimenting on animals isn’t an ethical or even relevant route to study the complexity of human pain.†says Dr Gill Langley of the Dr Hadwen Trust, “It is critical that these often simplistic experiments are replaced with more advanced techniques that don’t involve inflicting animal suffering. Powerful brain imaging machines could help revolutionise pain research globally and speed up the development of pain-killing drugs, providing much needed hope for chronic pain sufferers. But the enormous potential of imaging approaches will only be realised if the government and the research funders make a concerted effort to invest in these human-focused technologies.â€
One of the major advantages of these advanced techniques is that the species of relevance (humans) is studied and that volunteers are able to verbally communicate their experience of pain and pain relief in a way that is impossible with animals. Patients can also be stratified into sub-groups, to help develop more specific treatment strategies. For example, human studies are revealing gender differences in pain processing, and showing that painkillers appear to work differently in men and women.
We recommend replacing animal experiments wherever possible with an expanded programme of human-based pain research. We would like to see: the establishment of co-ordinated regional human tissue banks to make human tissues and cells more available for research, as well as a UK Human Pain Research Network to encourage collaborative research, greater dialogue and a strategy for multi-disciplinary human volunteer studies.
Full article on Dr Hadwen Trust.