Scientists Find Nicotine Receptors Responsible for Easing Pain

French scientists have discovered how nicotine works in the brain to ease pain, which could pave the way for new drugs that are more effective but less addictive than painkillers such as morphine, they report in today’s Nature. Nicotine, the addictive element in cigarettes, dulls pain by interacting with certain receptor molecules in the brain.

Scientists have isolated and cloned 10 nicotine receptors, but until now they had not known which receptors were responsible for nicotine’s varied behavioral effects. Jean-Pierre Changeux and colleagues at the molecular neurobiology unit at the Institute Pasteur in Paris found that the receptors called alpha-4 and beta-2 are responsible for the pain-killing effects of nicotine.

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II