Medical Minute // Can Chronic Pain Be Prevented?

By Gila Lowell

Chronic pain after injury or surgery causes sometimes debilitating suffering in countless people. But there is a biological process that leads from acute pain to chronic pain—that is, where the pain doesn’t go away after the injury or surgery heals—and a new study, published in Science Advances, shows that it is possible to stop that process.

The researchers, led by a team at the University of California, Irvine, were able to knock out the enzyme N-acylethanolamine acid amidase (NAAA) in mice with tissue injury and keep them from developing chronic pain. 

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