People with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) experience gut pain that can be severe, and it doesn't always go away when their inflammation is under control and their colonoscopy looks normal. Now, in a new laboratory study, researchers found a previously unknown pain pathway that may explain this phenomenon.
The findings, published Oct. 23 in the journal Science Immunology, also point to a potential way to block that pain.
"Inflammation in the gut has always been thought of like a fire: the sensory nerves alarm because of the smoke and the heat, and when the fire is put out the alarm should stop," said study co-author Dr. Heng Xu, a physician at Ninth People's Hospital in Shanghai. Xu and his colleagues set out to try to isolate what could be causing the pain even when there's no visible "fire" or "smoke."
"What we found is that the tissue itself changes consistency," Xu told Live Science in an ...
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