News Study: Pain Neurons Respond to Garlic
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
WASHINGTON (AP) - People tend to love garlic or hate it, but few probably associate it with pain. Nonetheless, it turns out that pain-sensing nerves respond to the sulfur-based chemicals in garlic.
Indeed, the same mechanism the body uses to react to the sharpness of chili peppers and hot mustards like wasabi is the one that detects garlic, according to a study in Tuesday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
David Julius of the department of cellular and molecular pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, said the finding was made during research on the mechanisms of pain sensation.
Julius discovered that when a subset of pain neurons in rats activates a cell membrane channel called TRPA1 the result is a release of brain chemicals that stimulate blood vessel dilation and inflammation.
