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Dr. Marc Lévêque (Neurosurgery – Pain)
Medical validation:
April 25, 2023
While alcohol is known to numb pain, it seems it can also increase it, according to researchers.
It’s no secret that alcohol can change your mood, making you more cheerful or even more sociable. But it also seems to increase chronic pain. This is at least the conclusion of a new study, published in the pharmacological journal British Journal of Pharmacology.
Inflammatory proteins found in spinal cord tissue
The research, released on April 12, 2023, suggests that chronic alcohol consumption could make “more sensitive to pain“, through two different molecular mechanisms, one driven by alcohol consumption and the other by alcohol withdrawal.
“Pain is both a common symptom in patients suffering from alcohol dependence, but also a reason that prompts individuals to drink again“, specifies on this subject Marisa Roberto, main author of the study.
To better understand this pain-alcohol link, the researchers compared three groups of adult mice: rodents addicted to alcohol, animals that had limited access to alcohol (and were not considered addicted) and still others who had never drunk alcohol.
They then measured rodent allodynia (a sensation of pain triggered by a normally non-painful stimulus, editor’s note) after their last spontaneous alcohol consumption and during withdrawal.
Then, they used the immunoblotting technique to assess the levels of certain inflammatory proteins present in the spinal cord tissue of alcoholic and non-alcoholic animals.
Result ? If inflammation was elevated in alcohol-addicted and non-addicted animals, a significant level of specific molecules remained”in dependent mice“.
In them, allodynia has indeed developed”during alcohol withdrawal” and subsequent access to alcohol significantly “reduced pain sensitivity“.
Another notable finding of the survey: almost half of the mice that were not addicted to alcohol presented “signs of increased sensitivity to pain during withdrawal.” Except that, unlike the dependent mice, the fact that they again consumed alcohol had no effect on this neuropathy.
This means that different molecular mechanisms may be responsible for the pain experienced – persistent pain and/or alcoholic neuropathy (which is manifested by a decrease in sensitivity, numbness, burning sensations and tingling, editor’s note).
“These two types of pain vary greatly, which is why it is important to be able to tell them apart and to develop different ways of treating each type.“, says Vittoria Borgonetti, co-lead author of the study and postdoctoral associate at Scripps Research.
“Alcoholism is more common in chronic pain patients”
For his part, Dr. Lévêque, neurosurgeon and pain specialist, wishes to reaffirm the analgesic power of alcohol. It would increase, according to him, the threshold of tolerance to chronic pain.
“Some scientists affirm that its analgesic effect would be superior to paracetamol and comparable to that of codeine; two pints of beer would reduce the perception of pain by a quarter. Moreover, by reducing the state of anxiety, which increases the pain, the analgesic effect of spirits is enhanced.All this explains why alcoholism is more common in chronic pain patients.”
While waiting to better understand the mechanisms behind alcohol and pain, researchers now hope that these initial results will contribute to the development of new pain treatments.