Her name is Jo Cameron, she is seventy-five years old and she doesn’t know what pain is: throughout her life she has never felt it due to some genetic mutations which, in addition to not making her suffer physically, make her heal quickly despite not making herself account of their injuries.
His case has been studied for years, but now scientists have managed to get to the bottom of it and discover how genes are expressed at the molecular level. The results have been published on Brain.
WHEN PAIN IS USEFUL. Contrary to what one might think, not feeling pain is not positive: pain warns us that something is wrong, and pushes us to heal ourselves. Often those who do not perceive it, such as people suffering from injuries to the nervous system, risk not noticing a cut and getting infected.
Cameron, despite feeling that he is burning his skin “only when he smells burning”, has never had to deal with the unpleasant consequences of those suffering from analgesia. Why?
SUPERPOWERS IN THE GENES. The answer to this and other peculiarities lies in some mutations capable of overexpressing 797 genes and attenuating 348 of them. Among these, WNT16, responsible for bone regeneration and key of the superpowers Cameron’s healing.
Mutations in the BDNF gene are instead responsible for the lack of anxiety or fear in the 75-year-old, while an unusual activity of ACKR3, which regulates the levels of opioids (which act as analgesics), underlies the non-perception of pain.
a combination never seen before. However, the two main mutations are in the FAAH and FAAH-OUT genes: Cameron’s mutated version of the FAAH gene exists in a minority of the population, but is quite common. The mutation of the FAAH-OUT gene is instead rare, and the combination of the two mutations has never been found in any human being.
The possibility of limiting the activity of the FAAH gene to silence pain has been known for some time, but the drugs developed in the last twenty years have never been approved due to the numerous side effects they presented: perhaps focusing on the FAAH-OUT gene could be the key to developing effective analgesic therapy.
STRANGE Consequences. However, Cameron’s gene mutations have not only positive consequences: the woman suffers from slight memory lapses and once, after taking morphine for an operation, she experienced severe nausea and vomiting; another peculiar effect is that her saliva dissolves dental fixative pastes at an exceptional rate.
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History of anesthesia