�A panel of UK experts aforesaid using animals in painful sensation research has limited value and they should be replaced by neuroimaging techniques based on
fMRI, PET and other scanning technologies combined with new approaches such as genome-wide association and tissue research.
The instrument panel members, world Health Organization come from London, Manchester, Liverpool and Oxford, attended a shop called "Focus on Alternatives", which was
arranged by organizations funding alternatives to animal experiments, such as the RSPCA and the UK Human Tissues Bank. The results,
conclusions and recommendations of the workshop are reported in the 15 August issue of the journal Neuroimage.
UK scientists are compulsory by law to weigh non-animal approaches when designing new experiments. Animal
experiments in pain in the neck research sometimes use animals while they are conscious, and sometimes while under anaesthesia.
Although at that place have been a band of studies on human pain disorder, safe and effective treatments are still hard to find; yet animal models, some of
which take limited value, because they don't duplicate the processes of human pain, still dominate research and they raise ethical questions.
This is despite the opportunities offered by new technologies, particularly in the field of neuroimaging. According to the authors, the workshop
explored in a creative way, "the tools, strategies and challenges of replacement some creature experiments in pain research with ethically conducted
studies of human patients and healthy volunteers, in combination with in vitro methods".
The panel members looked at how unexampled neuroimaging techniques including functional magnetic sonority imaging (fMRI),
magnetoencephalography and positron emission tomography (PET), on their own or in combination, could be used to investigate human pain
conditions.
They ended there were lots of opportunities too to combine these methods with other techniques such as microdialysis (a lowly probe that
detects chemicals in the spaces betwixt cells in tissue), genome-wide association enquiry (looking at genetic differences between people),
studies on twins, and tissue research.
One of the co-authors, Professor Qasim Aziz, who is based at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry told the BBC that he used
neuroimaging techniques to explore the brains of patients with a ambit of pain sensation disorders such as irritable bowel and unexplained chest of drawers pain to work
out how the brain uses pain signals.
Aziz said that "new and highly sophisticated brain-imaging engineering is providing vital insights that fauna research has failed to produce". He wants
to see more scientists exploitation these methods, although he does unruffled see a need for animals in a limited sense, for instance in drug dose
experiments.
"Volunteer studies in pain research -- Opportunities and challenges to replace creature experiments: The report and recommendations of a
Focus on Alternatives workshop."
C.K. Langley, Q. Aziz, C. Bountra, N. Gordon, P. Hawkins, A. Jones, G. Langley, T. Nurmikko, I. Tracey.
NeuroImage, Volume 42, Issue 2, 15 August 2008, Pages 467-473.
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.05.030.
Click here for Abstract.
Sources: Journal abstract, BBC.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
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