Research hope for pain relief

An international group led by researchers from Leeds University has discovered how two proteins play a key role in the way people feel pain.

Nikita Gamper, a lecturer in the Institute of Membrane and Systems Biology in Leeds, who led the work, said: "Our research is trying to better understand where pain originates, to enable more targeted drugs to be developed."

In research funded jointly by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, Dr Gamper's team discovered that a substance released at sites of inflammation – called bradykinin – manipulate the two proteins to get nerve cells to send electrical "pain" signals to the brain.

The findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.