Scientists Find Nerve Responsible For Itching
Scientists say they have discovered the type of nerve cells that create an itchy sensation.
Writing in the journal Science, researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing used mice to determine the existence of a specific type of cell that relays a sensation that begs to be scratched.
"This finding has very important therapeutic implications," said Zhou-Feng Chen, of the Washington University team.
"We’ve shown that particular neurons are critical for the itching sensation but not for pain, which means those cells may contain several itch-specific receptors or signaling molecules that can be explored or identified as targets for future treatment or management of chronic itching.
The team was the first to discover GRPR in the spinal cord in 2007. GRPR is known as the “itch gene”.
"But the identification of an itch receptor in spinal-cord neurons didn’t mean those neurons were itch-specific because it was possible that they also could have pain-related genes," Chen said.
Researchers injected the spinal cord with a toxin that killed the cells where GRPR was active. This process killed the itch sensation in mice, but they were still able to feel pain, scientists noted.
"This is a very striking and unexpected result because it suggests there is an itch-specific neuronal pathway in the spinal cord," Chen said.
"We’ve shown that these GRPR neurons are important for itching sensation and not for pain, but we really don’t know much more about them," he added. "We still have a lot of questions, and we are very interested to find more answers."
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