Chronic pain may change our immune system, says study

The findings of a new study suggest that chronic pain may reprogramme the way genes work in the immune system. Researchers suggest that these findings would provide new avenues to diagnose and treat chronic pain in humans, as some of the genes found to be marked by chronic pain could also represent new targets for pain medications.

The new study, by McGill University and published in Scientific Reports, examined DNA from brains and white blood cells of rats, using a method that mapped DNA marking by a chemical called a methyl group. “Methyl marks are important for regulating how these genes function,” explains co-author Laura Stone, a professor in Dentistry and researcher in the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain. This sort of chemical marking is part of the growing field of epigenetics, which involves modifications that turn genes ‘on’ or ‘off’, effectively reprogramming how they work.

The study said that chronic pain – pain that lasts for six months or more – is one of the most common causes of disability worldwide. However, effective treatments for chronic pain often remain elusive.

“We found that chronic pain changes the way DNA is marked not only in the brain but also in T cells, a type of white blood cell essential for immunity,” says Moshe Szyf, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill. “Our findings highlight the devastating impact of chronic pain on other important parts of the body such as the immune system.

“We were surprised by the sheer number of genes that were marked by the chronic pain — hundreds to thousands of different genes were changed,” adds Szyf. “We can now consider the implications that chronic pain might have on other systems in the body that we don’t normally associate with pain.”

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