Breakthrough blood test reveals colour of chronic pain
A revolutionary on the spot blood test that identifies chronic pain by colour “biomarkers” will be revealed at a pain medicine conference in Sydney today. (Sunday May 6).
Australian neuroscientist Professor Mark Hutchinson who developed the world-first test with an Australian-based team believes the breakthrough has the potential to revolutionise the diagnosis and treatment for the one in five Australians who suffer chronic pain.
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Project 1
Title: Cell-based biomarker of persistent pain in livestock
Description: This project will translate a human biomarker of pain into the livestock setting to predict the chronic pain of animal husbandry practices.
Project available for: HDR
Location: Roseworthy and North Tce
Research Project start date: Semester 2 2019
Special requirements: surgical skills, cell culture experience and some bioinformatics
Professor Hutchinson said while the earlier “painSEQ” and “painCELL” blood tests developed by his team to identify pain were accurate, it took one to two days to get the “bench to bookshelf” results.
However, the simple colour biomarker “bench to bedside” blood test meant clinicians could get the results instantly. The test uses light measurement tools (hyperspectral imaging analysis) to identify the molecular structures of what pain actually looks like in blood cells.
“We are literally quantifying the colour of pain,” Professor Hutchinson explained.
“We’ve now discovered that we can use the natural colour of biology to predict the severity of pain. What we’ve found is that persistent chronic pain has a different natural colour in immune cells than in a situation where there isn’t persistent pain.”
It would be very useful in some situations. I know somebody who has a severely autistic son who cannot communicate much at all. He recently had a brain tumour removed. Him not being able to communicate pain is a big worry for them. They would not know if he was understanding the question "are you in pain?"Similar questions crossed my mind.
The colour thing is OK though. Cytochrome is called that because it has a particular colour - i.e. absorption spectrum. Same with haemoglobin of course. As molecules of this sort do their work they often change their colour.
There seems to be an assumption that chronic pain is something different or leads to some systemic effect that alters blood cells. If I get a huge pain from standing on a black berry thorn I don't think my blood cells will change colour before I have slipped my shoe off and removed the thorn.
The biggest problem for me is that pain has to be the best indicator of pain. It is its own gold standard. OK you might use a test to tell if someone who could not understand your language had pain but in most other situations people can say yes to 'are you in pain', or lift a finger if mute.
I sense some hype on this year old article!
There seems to be an assumption that chronic pain is something different or leads to some systemic effect that alters blood cells. If I get a huge pain from standing on a black berry thorn I don't think my blood cells will change colour before I have slipped my shoe off and removed the thorn.