Pain is an important yet the most troublesome physiological response able to be categorized in many types and operated by certain mechanisms. Countering pain becomes the first goal in any illness or state of injury. Opioids are the most potent analgesics under use but with serious drawbacks including physical dependence making their use to be restricted to an extent. Inhibition of nitric oxide synthesis produces analgesia evident by the experiments on L-NG-nitro arginine methyl ester, L-NAME, 1-(2-trifluoromethylphenyl) imidazole (TRIM), 7-Nitroindazole and most importantly neurotoxins from Ophiophagus Hannah(king cobra). The neurotoxins from various cobra venoms, epibatidine (an alkaloid from skin of Ecuadorian frog) and its synthetic and safer congener ABT-594 have been proved to possess prominent analgesic effect interestingly by neuronal acetyl choline receptors modulation. They are devoid of side effects and toxicities of opioids including physical dependence because of their opioid independent mechanism. Cobrotoxin is the one such product developed from cobra venom neurotoxins igniting a hope of emergence of more candidates of this category having a fair advantage over opioids with equal efficacy in future. A vast range of neurotoxins present in nature are yet to be explored for their therapeutic applicability as analgesics which may be acting either through nitric oxide synthesis inhibition or neuronal acetyl choline receptors modulation. Extensive research in this field is expected to build a new series of effective and safe analgesics.
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