Scientists Find Gene for Itchiness
A recent discovery may one day lead to itch-busting treatments.
July 26, 2007 — -- Scientists have scratched the surface of what appears to be a gene that makes us itch.
A newly released study, published in the current issue of Nature, found that mice without the gene were much less likely to scratch themselves when provoked.
"It's quite interesting because itching is such a common phenomenon. And it's also a very big problem, clinically," said study author Zhou-Feng Chen, associate professor of anesthesiology at the Washington University School of Medicine Pain Center.
"But," he added, "nobody knew which gene was involved in the sensation."
Now Chen and his team have caught the gene for a protein, called GRPR, red-handed.
GRPR is a specific molecule that resides in spinal cord nerve cells, thought to be responsible for communicating messages of itchiness to the brain.
The scientists looked at mice that had normal versions of GRPR and compared them to mice that had no GRPR at all.
Both groups of mice responded in the same way to heat, pressure and pain. But mice who were missing GRPR scratched themselves much less often after receiving injections of itch-causing chemicals.
"I think it's a really interesting, possibly breakthrough kind of report," said itch expert Earl Carstens, a professor of neurobiology at the University of California at Davis.
"It suggests that there must be a separate itch-producing pathway."
Although itchiness and pain inform the brain in similar ways, the two feelings are biologically different.
"For a long time, people thought that itch may be some sort of minor pain," said Chen. "The relationship between pain and itch is quite interesting because imaging studies have shown that lots of [itch] pathways in the central nervous system seem to overlap with pain pathways."
In the past decade or so, however, new research has shed light on the idea that these two sensations are physically distinct.
"The animal responses to pain and itch are quite different," said Chen.
