Date:11/23/2009

will get them through the crisis and back to their lives. "The PCA pump is to get you to a steady state and the oral meds are to keep you there," said Dr. Lyon who will be measuring outcomes for patients, including the need for a return visit, and working with physicians and hospitals across Georgia to set up similar systems.

Better understanding the genetic modifications behind variations in the frequency, intensity and treatment of pain crises. Researchers believe their studies, which will include pain diaries kept by patients, will enable individualized pain treatment strategies that improve quality of life and avoid the mischaracterization of patients as drug seekers. Opioid pain relievers, such as morphine, are frequently used to treat pain crises by targeting the Mu opioid receptor gen. Variations of this receptor gene appear to affect response to pain relievers as well as the pain threshold. Studying these variations and the impact on pain perception will likely help explain the variations in pain response and drug need physicians see in patients, Dr. Kutlar said.

Researching the body's natural switch from production of fetal hemoglobin which cannot sickle to adult hemoglobin during the first weeks of life. Because most adults have only miniscule amounts of fetal hemoglobin, understanding the switching process could lead to better drugs that selectively raise the levels and essentially eliminate the pain and organ damage resulting from sickle cell disease. Dr. Dorothy Y.H. Tuan, a molecular biologist at MCG who studies the switch, believes it has to do with the changing genetic expression from fetus to adult. She believes part of how hydroxyurea, the only FDA-approved drug for sickle cell, switches expression back to the fetal state is by activating the transcription factor, GATA-2, which binds to the promoter sequence of the fetal hemoglobin gene. "This is our hypothesis and we need to prove it," she said

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Contact: Toni Baker tbaker@mcg.edu 706-721-4421 Medical College of Georgia Source:Eurekalert

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