Animal tests on chronic pain 'are not effective'
A new report has suggested that scientists should reduce the number of animal experiments and embrace new technologies to gain a better understanding about chronic pain in conditions such as osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia.
The researchers from several different institutions across the UK published their conclusions in the journal Neuroimage.
They argued that decades of animal experiments have not resulted in a comprehensive understanding of human pain nor any safe and effective analgesia for chronic pain.
According to the authors, animal models of pain are too simplistic and often do not translate across into humans. They added that attempting to study basic behavioural responses in animals that cannot verbalise their experiences should also be regarded as an imprecise form of research.
Instead, the team suggested that advanced non-animal technologies - such as human brain imaging - might actually offer greater future hope for people with conditions such as osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia.
Dr Gill Langley of the Dr Hadwen Trust commented: "It's clear that experimenting on animals isn't an ethical or even relevant route to study the complexity of human pain.
"It is critical that these often simplistic experiments are replaced with more advanced techniques that don't involve inflicting animal suffering.
"Powerful brain imaging machines could help revolutionise pain research globally and speed up the development of pain-killing drugs, providing much needed hope for chronic pain sufferers."
Alan Silman, medical director of the Arthritis Research Campaign, said it was a controversial area, not least of which was the issue of causing animals pain.
"There are a number of concerns with the animal studies in pain research," said Professor Silman. "Work has tended to show that how analgesics work in animals do not predict what happens in humans. Humans show much greater variability in response which is not picked up from animal work, and animal models of pain are not really good models of chronic pain especially of arthritis pain which occurs in the elderly.
"We lack really effective ways of studying pain which is why perhaps there has been no real advance in understanding why people with arthritis get pain. Sadly there are too few pain researchers in the UK."
The Arthritis Research Campaign has just announced call for funding for national centre in understanding pain in arthritis.
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