A l'UM la science [S04-ep09]: Making pain management safer
This week on A l'UM la science, Cyril Rivat, researcher at the Montpellier Neuroscience InstituteInstitute of Neuroscience in Montpellier, reveals promising new avenues for the safe treatment of pain with opioids. The report takes you to the Synbio 3 platform platform, and our guest for the last 3 minutes invites you to a conference on restrictive diets. A program broadcast every Wednesday on Divergence FM 93.9.
A headache, a toothache, a bad back with the first cold snaps of winter, and we're in the medicine cabinet looking for the last tablet of paracetamol. But what happens when the pain takes hold and paracetamol and ibuprofen are no longer enough? As the therapeutic arsenal of analgesics is not infinite, chronic pain often rhymes with opioids. Of course, not everyone takes morphine, but other drugs have quietly made their way into our pharmacies: codeine and tramadol, which from December1 will require a secure prescription. Why should this be the case?
Because, according to a survey conducted by the French addictovigilance network, the number of addicts who named tramadol as the first product to cause their addiction has increased 17-fold in 10 years. The mechanism is similar to that of other non-prescription drugs: too many doses taken over too long a period, tolerance to the substance builds up while, paradoxically, sensitivity to pain increases. So doses and frequency are also increased, and when that's no longer enough, some move on to the next level: oxycodone, fentanyl, buprenorphine.
This story has claimed the lives of over 800,000 Americans in 25 years(Fentanyl, cocaine, the "zombie drug": opioids combined with stimulants continue to wreak death in the US, in The Conversation, November 12, 2024), and what is now being called the opioid crisis continues to accelerate, with 82,000 people estimated to have died between February 2021 and February 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So what can we do about this crisis? Since we can't afford to leave the victims of chronic pain to suffer without a solution, the challenge would be to cancel out or limit the phenomenon of opioid withdrawal and hypersensitivity to pain, which leads to ever-increasing doses.
Our guest has taken up this challenge. Cyril Rivat is a researcher at the Montpellier Neuroscience Institute. On November 7, with other colleagues from the University of Montpellier, Inserm and CNRS among others, he published an article in Nature Communication entitled Inhibition of FLT3 signaling suppresses opioid tolerance and hyperalgesia while preserving analgesia. He tells us about it in A l'UM la science.
In the second half of the program, we continue with the theme of drugs and take you to the Synbio 3 platform attached to the Max Mousseron Biomolecules Institute. Pascal Verdié explains how he and his colleagues on the peptide platform synthesize biomolecules and polymers of biological and pharmaceutical interest.
At the end of the program, Florian Bergohne, Project Manager at the Handiversity Department, presents a conference for the general public to be held on November 21 on the Triolet campus between 12:15 and 1:30 pm on the theme Restrictive diets? What are the consequences and how to deal with them?
At UM la science you've got the program, here we go!
Coproduction: Divergence FM / Université de Montpellier
Animation: Lucie Lecherbonnier
Interview : Lucie Lecherbonnier / Aline Périault
Reporting and editing: Lucie Lecherbonnier / Aline Périault
Production : Tom Chevalier
Listen to the program "A l'UM la science" on Divergence FM 93.9
