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Alternative analgesics: New drugs for pain seek to improve on ketamine's benefits

Nature Medicine volume 23, pages 8–10 (2017)Cite this article

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“It felt like my whole body had been dropped in a volcano,” she says. After her doctors had tried every possible therapy to no avail, Cosgrove was diagnosed with a rare, chronic neuro-autoimmune pain disease called complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS).

CRPS is described by those afflicted as the worst pain imaginable—more than three times the intensity of childbirth, as measured by the commonly used McGill Pain Questionnaire. A recent study found that nearly three-quarters of people with CRPS are at high risk for committing suicide from the intensity and chronicity of the pain1. Cosgrove herself experienced symptoms of depression, but she decided to try something different: the anesthetic-turned-party drug ketamine. Cosgrove says that it was the first medication that provided her with any kind of relief; pain that she had previously quantified as close to an '8' or '9' on a scale of 1–10 was now closer to a '4.' In an experimental setting, ketamine has been used to treat everything from depression to migraines. Now, one of the most promising areas of low-dose ketamine treatment is for people such as Cosgrove, who have CRPS and have not responded to other forms of pain treatment.

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  1. Carrie Arnold is a freelance science writer based in Richmond, Virginia.,

    Carrie Arnold

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Arnold, C. Alternative analgesics: New drugs for pain seek to improve on ketamine's benefits. Nat Med 23, 8–10 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0117-8

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