Word: chymopapain
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...familiar item to most housewives. Sold in grocery stores as a meat tenderizer, it can make even the toughest cuts easy to chew. Now papain is moving from the kitchen into the operating room. At hospitals in Boston and Chicago, doctors are using the extract (known medically as chymopapain) to tenderize slipped spinal discs, a treatment that relieves pain and spares many patients surgery...
...slipped discs can be treated successfully by the prescription of bed rest or aspirin or other painkillers. If the pain persists, doctors frequently perform a laminectomy, a delicate surgical procedure in which the disc is removed from between two vertebrae, which are then fused together. But in many cases, chymopapain may now provide an alternative to surgery. The enzyme injected into the disc breaks down the ground substance, enabling it and the water to escape and be absorbed by the body. That causes the disc to shrink back into place, thus easing the pressure on the surrounding nerves...