Environment
13 Oct 2022
From chili-heat pain relief to blue whale migration: 5 Frontiers articles you won’t want to miss
by Angharad Brewer Gillham, Frontiers science writer Image: Shutterstock.com At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, many often fly under the radar. Here are just five amazing papers you may have missed. Chili to the rescue: Modulating capsaicin as a treatment for chronic itching Pain and itching are both signals that help humans protect themselves, by prompting us to end contact with whatever causes us pain or make us itch. However, they are also key symptoms of many disorders, and can be frustratingly difficult to treat. Scientists from the Universidad Miguel Hernández, writing in Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, investigated whether transient receptor potential channels, which pick up sensory cues ranging from the taste of wasabi to changes in pH, could help treat pain and itching. Previous attempts to exploit these channels to stop pain and itching have not been successful because they cause overheating as a side effect, so the authors suggested that ‘soft’ modulation of the channels might be more patient-friendly, targeting only the channels that aren’t working correctly. While there are several existing medications which use capsaicin to target these channels, […]
