Painkillers Sometimes Heighten Sensitivity To Pain

After Adolescence, Human Brains Are Stuck With The Cells They Have

Lorenzo Gritti for NPR When Opioids Make Pain Worse Dr. Clayton Dalton, a new contributor to Shots, reports on a paradoxical problem with opioids. Sometimes the potent drugs can make pain worse.   Dalton, who works as emergency medicine resident at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, saw that some of his patients found the insertion of a simple IV excruciating.   “I began to notice a strange pattern,” he writes. “These hypersensitive patients often had a history of using opioids.”   He investigates the phenomenon, called opioid-induced hyperalgesia, and learns that doctors had seen it as far back as the 1800s.   How common it is, however, still isn’t known.   Science Source/Getty Images Sorry, Adults, No New Neurons For Your Aging Brains A group of scientists concluded that human brains don’t add new neurons after adolescence. The findings came after the researchers looked at brain samples from 59 people of various ages and saw no immature neurons in anyone older than 13.   The work challenges decades of research suggesting that new neurons continue to appear in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in memory and emotion.   NPR’s Jon Hamilton reports that the results call into question claims that both exercise and some anti-depressant drugs could boost the production of new neurons.   If the results hold up, scientists will have to figure out how the adult human brain can change throughout life without adding new cells.   Jessica Morris prepares to inject a blood-clotting protein into son Landon's arm at their home in Yuba City, Calif.  Heidi de Marco/Kaiser Health News Miracle Of Hemophilia Drugs Comes At A Steep Price There is a bounty of life-saving medicines to treat hemophilia, the inherited blood-clotting disorder. In the U.S. alone, there are 28 different drugs, with another 21 drugs in development. But Jenny Gold, a reporter from our partner Kaiser Health News, finds that all that competition hasn’t done anything to lower prices. Drugs to treat hemophilia cost an average of more than $270,000 a year for each patient. "How much would you be willing to pay to have your child lead a normal life?" said Jessica Morris, mother to a son with hemophilia. "I don't think that there's anything we wouldn't pay or sacrifice for him." Your Shots editor, Scott Hensley   You received this message because you're subscribed to our Health emails. |  Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy | NPR 1111 N. CAPITOL ST. NE WASHINGTON DC 20002