For decades, opioids have dominated pain management. But the drugs are frequently ineffective for chronic pain and can lead to addiction, prompting researchers to search for alternative ways to manage pain.
Now, a team of scientists at Northwestern University have developed a miniaturized implant that they say treats pain in rats by simply cooling the peripheral nerves that transmit information between the brain and the rest of the body.
This soft implant, described in a paper published yesterday (June 30) in Science, is made from water-soluble and biocompatible materials that allow it to wrap around peripheral nerves like a cuff. Its unique engineering allows it to target and cool nerves in an area as small as several millimeters, making the device far more effective than other, less precise nerve cooling technologies that can damage the surrounding muscle tissue.
“When your fingers get cold, they get numb. So that’s the basic ...
