El Caliente

El Caliente

You might not like the idea of taking an opioid painkiller such as morphine, but if you ever have a painful surgery, such as knee replacement, no one will blame you if you quickly change your mind. Something to erase the pain? You might sign on for just about anything at that point.

So how about a little hot sauce?

Passing the exit to La La Land

During the Civil War, doctors overwhelmed with battlefield casualties dispensed millions of doses of opium and morphine. The drugs worked wonders in reliving agonizing pain, but the most obvious drawback became apparent when an estimated 500,000 veterans returned home addicted to painkillers.

Morphine use today presents the same challenge. The drug is a wonderfully effective pain reliever, but it has to be carefully managed to avoid addiction.

For years, doctors and researchers have been looking for a non-addictive pain relief agent that can be given locally without affecting the entire nervous system. They may have found it in capsaicin – the phytochemical that makes chili peppers almost inedibly spicy.

If you’ve ever bitten into a chili pepper I’m sure you recall the blazing pain, but you may also remember the numbness that followed a minute or two later. That’s the effect of capsaicin. It acts on pain fibers in the types of nerve cells that sense long-term pain. When those cells receive a jolt of capsaicin, they also allow calcium to enter, which eventually causes overloading of the nerves. The result: What is unbearably hot one minute suddenly turns numb.

That’s the idea behind Adlea, a drug that utilizes ultra-purified capsaicin as the primary active ingredient. When doctors apply Adlea directly to cut tissue before suturing, patients under anesthesia don’t feel the initial intense heat, but many enjoy a prolonged numbness at the point of surgery. In some patients the numbness lasts for days, possibly even weeks.

Spice for life

According to unpublished studies conducted by Anesiva (the company that developed Adlea), the painkiller significantly reduced pain and the need for morphine in 50 patients undergoing knee replacement surgery. Similar results were reported in 41 hernia repair patients. Additional studies are underway in patients undergoing orthopedic surgeries, arthroscopic shoulder surgery, and surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee.

So far, there’s no word on potential side effects of Adlea, and the drug has not yet been approved by the FDA.

Other capsaicin research is currently in the works at Harvard University (for use in epidurals during labor), and a 2008 trial at the National Institutes of Health will test an ultra-potent capsaicin-like phytochemical in patients with advanced cancer.

In the e-Alert “A New Way to Spell Relief” (4/3/02), I told you about a study in which capsaicin-rich red pepper powder was used to significantly reduce chronic stomach pain symptoms associated with dyspepsia. You can find that e-Alert at this link: http://www.hsionline.com/ealerts/ea200204/ea20020403.html

Source:
“Doctors Test Hot Sauce for Pain Relief” Lauran Neergaard, The Associated Press, 10/29/07, ap.org