Today is Sunday and keeping with the topic of the weekend…..drugs. If you are old enough to appreciate drugs then this is for you.
Ever since Katrina crushed my leg I have been dealing with pain….lots and lots of pain…….I have tried just about every pain med the is…….Loritab, Tramadol, oxymorphone and morphine……..so far I am sad to say that morphine seems to give me relief…….not that I would ever want to be tied to an opiate……but if I am to function daily….I must succumb to the side effects of the drug……..
There is some ‘good’ news on the horizon……I guess we could call it good news….especially for those with massive pain…….
Move over, morphine. Someday, we may be turning to carnivorous snails for our pain-killing needs, a study suggests. Australian researchers have found that a drug made using venom from ocean-dwelling cone snails may be 100 times as powerful as top painkillers morphine and gabapentin, which are currently used to ease chronic nerve pain born from injury, cancer, diabetes, and other diseases, AFP reports. What’s more, the drug, based on peptides called conotoxins that reside in the snails’ venom, is thought not to have the addictive properties of other painkillers, the Sydney Morning Herald notes. So far, though, the drug has been tested only on rats. “We don’t know about side effects yet, as it hasn’t been tested in humans. But we think it would be safe,” says lead researcher David Craik. A test on people is at least two years off, he notes; still, the finding could lead to a “whole new class of drugs capable of relieving one of the most severe forms of chronic pain that is currently very difficult to treat”—and one taken orally. Another drug made from conotoxin is already approved for use on humans, but it requires spinal cord injection. (Meanwhile, a painkiller that one expert says “will kill as soon as it’s released” is slated to hit shelves this month.)
Let me see….there is a toad I can lick and get screaming messed up, right? And now there is a toxic snail…what will that go for….by the pound or gram……?