From Nancy Sajben, MD October 30, 2013
As a physician who prescribes Oxytocin [OT] and sees profound relief of many forms of intractable pain and/or relief of treatment refractory Major Depressive Disorder or Anxiety and Panic Disorder, this research on mechanisms is deeply meaningful and long awaited.
Oxytocin is a hormone made in the brain, but also in the heart and other organs in women and men. It is rare to find work on glia and oxytocin. Today the International Association for Study of Pain announced the final report from their 2012 Early Research Career Grant:
“Dr. Alexander Charlet of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Strasbourg, France, has submitted his final report for his project “Involvement of astrocytes in the endogenous oxytocin modification of amygdala microcircuits….”
“Dr. Charlet’s project focuses on the functional consequences of endogenous OT release in amygdala microcircuits on nociception and pain. In addition, he aims to decipher the precise mechanism, cellular and molecular, by which OT exerts its action. Thus, the purposes of his project are to characterize in vivo and in vitro the effects of endogenous OT in the amygdala on pain-related symptoms….
Dr. Sajben has an informative website, http://painsandiego.org. She tells O’Shaughnessy’s, ” I don’t see a lot of MMJ pts in my practice but my heart is with you and I love the rare, very very rare pt who has analgesia from MMJ. Wish I saw better results. Some are using Statewide Collective, others use Mother Earth Dispensary in San Diego that has been here for many years.”
