Table Of Content
Another study found that redheads were less sensitive to pain from electric shocks than other people. Someone with red hair has two copies of the MC1R gene, receiving one from each parent. The gene also carries a certain mutation in most people who have red hair. It’s this variant that has been identified as playing a role in why redheads may respond to pain drugs differently than others. But research into the specifics has yielded sometimes contradictory results.
Study Limitation
But because their bodies don’t produce melanin, which can help protect the skin against damaging ultraviolet rays, it also means that gingers are at greater risk for developing melanoma. If you are a redhead and have concerns about anesthesia or require surgery, it’s important to discuss your concerns with your anesthesiologist. They can help determine the appropriate dosage of anesthesia and anesthesia plan for you and ensure that you receive safe and effective care. As a ballet dancer in a former life, countless rehearsal hours in pointe shoes once landed me in a podiatrist’s office with a particularly inflamed ingrown toenail.
The ‘redhead gene’ may be connected to pain sensitivity
“Of course, people with blond, brown or black hair will also vary in how much anesthesia they need. But in general, people with red hair require more anesthetic than people with other hair colors,” Dr. Sessler shares. The same gene that gives someone fiery locks may also lower their pain tolerance.
Subjects
Such subtle effects may simply be undetectable even in a careful clinical cohort study. The researchers conducted their experiments using a strain of red-haired mice that carry the MC1R variant also found in people with red hair. A 2021 mouse study showed that mice carrying MC1R gene found in people with red hair had a higher pain tolerance, but the reason isn't well understood. All these results suggested that pain thresholds in red-haired mice are not dependent on a β-endorphin-opioid receptor signalling pathway. The increased μ-opioid receptor signalling in the context of low plasma β-endorphin levels could be due to (a) increased expression of some other endogenous opioid, (b) μ-receptor adaptation, or (c) reduction of a pathway that is antagonistic to opioid signalling.
The team then looked at how these melanocytes affected the pain threshold. They found that the melanocytes in red-haired mice secreted lower levels of a protein called proopiomelanocortin (POMC). POMC is cut into different hormones, including one that enhances pain perception (melanocyte stimulating hormone) and another that blocks pain (beta-endorphin). These hormones affect the balance between opioid receptors that inhibit pain (OPRM1) and melanocortin 4 receptors (MC4R) that increase pain sensitivity. Conceptually, decreased anesthetic sensitivity in this population could result in insufficient anesthesia and potentially even AWR.
However, studies suggest that their general pain tolerance may be higher. People with red hair also respond more effectively to opioid pain medications, requiring lower doses. In a 2006 study published in Anesthesiology, women with red hair required much more anesthesia than women with dark hair, linked to a distinct genetic phenotype that redheads have. The question, then, is why the results of Gradwohl et al. differ from a half-dozen rodent and exploratory human studies. The most obvious explanation is that previous studies evaluated specific outcomes, including MAC and pain sensitivity, under optimal circumstances.
Your RSS Feed
Acute pain can evolve into chronic pain, which underlines these issues and therefore, pain can exist or continue in the absence of any apparent noxious stimulus. Moreover, the necessary treatment of pain can lead to complexities created by dependence or hyperalgesia [49]. Research has indicated that genotype can at least somewhat determine an individual’s response to different types of pain assay [24,25,26]. Animal studies offer the advantage of creating genomic variants and more invasive techniques, but animals cannot report pain, so all measures are surrogates [50].
Does childbirth hurt more for redheads? - Today's Parent
Does childbirth hurt more for redheads?.
Posted: Wed, 09 Feb 2022 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Gradwohl et al. thus have no statistical power for drawing any conclusion about awareness from these data. It is thought that MC1R variant mutations are also involved in one’s response to pain and anesthesia. Around the same time however, Mogil’s team was investigating aspects of MC1R’s role in pain perception. Redheads of both genders needed less of the opioid morphine to dull their pain, while redheaded women needed less of a little-used kappa-opioid drug sometimes used to treat labor pain.
Red hair and pain sensitivity: insights into genomics of pain?
This may mean that some variants of the MC1R gene contribute to increased pain sensitivity, while others contribute to increased pain tolerance. In 2003, researchers observed that people with red hair didn’t have an increased sensitivity to electrical stimulation compared to people with dark hair. But they had a higher sensitivity and lower tolerance for cold and heat pain. POMC gets cut into several hormones that affect sensitivity to pain and opioids by helping control the activity of specific receptors.
Lidocaine is an anesthetic that can be applied topically or subcutaneously (injected into the skin). This can lead to serious side effects such as constipation, fatigue, and the risk of physical dependence. A 2004 nonhuman lab study with the MC1R mutation also recognized the need for additional anesthetic to achieve the same sedation. Intraoperative BIS™ values were obtained for all patients with a BIS Quatro forehead sensor and BIS XP software (Covidien; Boulder, CO, USA). As with ETAC, BIS values were recorded by MetaVision software or Trendface Solo software.
Research has found that redheads may have differences in certain health-related variables like the incidence of skin cancer and Parkinson's disease. However, it remains unclear what if any effect red hair color has on the perception of pain. There were no demonstrable differences between red-haired patients and controls in response to anesthetic and analgesic agents or in recovery parameters. These findings suggest that perioperative anesthetic and analgesic management should not be altered based on self-reported red-hair phenotype.
Robinson et al. noted that the different melanocortin receptor, MC4R has been implicated in pain control [56]. The peptide SHU‐9119 antagonizes MC4R, despite being an MC1R agonist, and was found to be analgesic in black mice, mimicking the red-haired (Mc1re/e) genotype. Since these mice have wild-type pain thresholds, and levels of all POMC products, but lack MC1R function, these results strongly suggest that the analgesic effects of SHU‐9119 are MC1R independent and likely due to ligand effects on MC4R (or MC3R, another related receptor). Thus, MC4R signalling may balance opioid signalling in modulating responses to pain.
For all analyses, the direction of effect is shown with respect to the minor allele count of the tested variant. Robinson et al. [54] recently conducted an extensive series of experiments presented within a single paper, and it is worth presenting their results in the logical sequential order they undertook them to unravel the relationships between red hair, MC1R and opioid signalling. For a summary of the different mouse models used by Robinson et al., see Table 1. The natural, main ligand of MC1R, α-melanocyte stimulating hormone (α-MSH), is a cleavage product of adrenocorticotrophin hormone (ACTH), which is in turn a product of the prohormone proopiomelanocortin (POMC) within the hypothalamic-pituitary system (Fig. 1) [20].
No comments:
Post a Comment