Pain

Pain Management Today

Anyone battling pain for a long time will have tried a number of things, with mixed success.  Medications with high potential for addiction and nasty side effects, sometimes taking weeks to even know if they’re working.  A confusing abundance of expensive alternative medicine options.  Grueling restrictive diets and physical therapy.  Which treatment or lifestyle change is right for you?

Patients and physicians alike often walk in the dark when it comes to pain management.  There is no test for pain, and we rely on a subjective 0-to-10 pain scale to judge how it feels.  This is why it is difficult to self-assess how much better or worse you are.  For the same reason,  finding safe and effective treatment options through proper clinical trials is very challenging.

A significant body of research has been devoted to the search of molecular markers of pain.  Aumics will continue to support this work.  Our goal is to facilitate clinical translation of the most promising results by investing in the technology and infrastructure required for large-scale studies.

 

Nature & Nurture

Our lives start with DNA, but it is only the beginning of the story.  The genetic code prescribes what kind of tools will your body make to take care of its chemical makeup—how to turn food into energy, how fast should your heart beat, or how to fight off pathogens.  Many external factors (nutrition, lifestyle, exposures to other chemicals) interfere at every step of the way.  That’s why we often hear that the human experience is an interplay of genetic and environmental factors.

Your body chemistry (metabolome) is the most immediate reflection of what is happening inside you.  The molecular composition of your body uniquely defines how you feel at the moment (happy? hungry? rested?) and can even help predict how you might feel in the future.

The sensation of pain is mediated by molecules as well.  Our central hypothesis is that by counting thousands of different molecules in your body, we can quantify pain, find its origins, and issue personalized guidance on how to get rid of it.  DNA may be your destiny, but pain is not.

Why am I in pain?  What’s wrong with me?  When will it stop?

We’ve seen the agony of chronic pain, and sympathize with you deeply.  That’s why we’re keen on making an impact in chronic, debilitating, and poorly understood conditions that involve pain, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, interstitial cystitis, and migraines.