The ‘genetic’ secret of a woman who does not feel pain and who heals faster than other people, as well as feeling no anxiety or fear was revealed by an English team after careful research
An accurate study was carried out to clarify which condition leads a 75-year-old woman to feel no pain, to heal faster than any other person and not to experience feelings of anxiety and fear with the same intensity. Researchers from University College London worked on it, managing to reveal the secret of Jo Cameron, a Scottish woman whose story went around the world after her particular ‘characteristics’ were disclosed in 2019 so as to be nicknamed Wonder Woman. The team worked to discover the ‘genetic’ secret of what is a very rare condition, reported in medical literature manuals under the name of congenital analgesia. The discovery in Jo took place by chance in 2013 by her doctor, after she reported that she had not felt pain following major surgeries to which she had undergone.
The objective of the years-long studies is to lay the foundations for discovering the biological mechanisms that give shape to this condition in order to create specific drugs and launch revolutionary therapies against chronic pain, which hundreds of millions of people around the world have to live with. A problem that significantly worsens the quality of life but for which, thanks to the discovery of Wonder Woman’s genetic profile, things could change. The team from the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research worked in coordination with colleagues from the Institute of Neurology and the Faculty of Medicine – QU Health of the University of Qatar, led by the member of the Molecular Nociception Group at the UK university, Professor J. Cox.
We started from “Microdeletion in a FAAH pseudogene identified in a patient with high anandamide concentrations and pain insensitivity”, a 2019 research that led to a first discovery. That is, the mutation in the FAAH-OUT gene identified in the ‘junk DNA’ area, which is responsible for the condition of today 75-year-old Jo Cameron.
The new study made it possible to ascertain that the mutated gene “modulates” the expression of FAAH, another gene that is part of the endocannabinoid system and which is nicknamed the ‘forgetful gene’. In fact it is involved in both pain and mood and even memory. A mutation of it, therefore, can affect both the perception of pain and the intensity of anxiety.
There is therefore a close link between two genes, apart from which the team has tried, through laboratory experiments, to determine the cascade of molecular mechanisms at the base. It therefore emerged that going to reduce the levels of FAAH-OUT also those of FAAH are reduced. And this also affects the molecular pathways related to wound healing as well as mood. The team also found that the WNT16, BDNF, ACKR3 genes are most closely linked to processes of increased fear and anxiety.