Word: painfulness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...prostaglandins trigger pain and inflammation, and when the body is injured or irritated--as it is in arthritic joints--they are released in huge quantities. That's why arthritis is accompanied by stiffness, swelling and pain...
...1970s, researchers discovered that aspirin reduces that pain and inflammation by lowering prostaglandin levels. It does so by blocking an enzyme called cyclooxygenase, or COX, that's involved in the manufacture of prostaglandins. What scientists didn't know until the early 1990s, however, was that cyclooxygenase comes in at least two versions: COX-1, ultimately responsible for protecting the stomach and making platelets sticky; and COX-2, which triggers pain and inflammation. The obvious goal, at least as far as pain relief is concerned: develop a drug that blocks...
...inhibitors may not just control pain; they may also one day prevent some types of cancer. Researchers have learned that malignant cells in the intestines manufacture COX-2 enzymes to accelerate their growth. (That may help explain why consuming fruits and vegetables, which block COX-2 enzymes naturally, seems to protect against colon cancer.) Clinical trials are under way in England to see if superaspirins can prevent colon cancer. Other scientists, meanwhile, have determined that COX-2 inhibitors could conceivably lessen some of the brain damage in Alzheimer's disease...
...loved playing baseball as a kid, and then I hated it. Not half bad as a pitcher when I was 13, I threw my arm out, and my idiot coach said, "Pitch through the pain," and I did. I was never able to throw hard after that. Maybe it was a bit of good luck. The advantage in later years, when I became a player of the game of catch, was that I was all motion and no speed--a change-up artist with nothing to change up on--so that the children could study the mechanics of throwing...
What faster relief from the pain of migraine headaches than a pill that melts in your mouth? Maxalt-MLT, just approved by the FDA, does exactly that, allowing sufferers to avoid the nausea that often comes with washing down pills with water. Unfortunately, like other migraine drugs, it is still unsafe for those with heart problems...