Researchers have developed a test that objectively measures pain biomarkers in blood. The test could help physicians better treat patients with precision medicine, and help stem the tide of the opioid crisis.
The test, developed by the Indiana University School of Medicine, uses biomarkers in the blood to not only gain an objective understanding of a patient’s pain levels, but also provide a better long-term look at a patient’s medical future, according to a report by ScienceDaily.
A study led by psychiatry professor Alexander Niculescu, and published this week in the Nature journal Molecular Psychiatry tracked hundreds of participants at the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis.
“We have developed a prototype for a blood test that can objectively tell doctors if the patient is in pain, and how severe that pain is. It’s very important to have an objective measure of pain, as pain is a subjective sensation. Until now we have had to rely on patients self-reporting or the clinical impression the doctor has,” says Niculescu, who worked with other Department of Psychiatry researchers on the study. “When we started this work it was a farfetched idea. But the idea was to find a way to treat and prescribe things more appropriately to people who are in pain.”
According to the report, the Indiana University blood test not only uses biomarkers in the blood to provide an objective measure of pain, but it can also match those biomarkers with potential treatment options. It uses a prescription database to indicate which pain killers are more effective against those particular biomarkers, ScienceDaily reports. Describing the biomarkers as a fingerprint, Niculescu says the test allows physicians to match them against the drugs in the database and see which compound “would normalise the signature.”
“Through precision medicine you’re giving the patient treatment that is tailored directly to them and their needs,” Niculescu says. “We wanted first to find some markers for pain that are universal, and we were able to. We know, however, based on our data that there are some markers that work better for men, some that work better for women. It could be that there are some markers that work better for headaches, some markers that work better for fibromyalgia and so on. That is where we hope to go with future larger studies.”
