Sex bias in pain research

Published: 21 May 2020

It is increasingly clear that male and female humans and rodents process pain in different ways. And that there are important differences in the underlying mechanisms involved at genetic, molecular...

Are scientists studying the wrong kind of mice?

Published: 4 December 2018

Mice represent well over half of the non-human subjects of biomedical research, and the vast majority of those mice are inbred. Formed by generation after generation of mating between brothers and...

Newly discovered pathway for pain processing could lead to new treatments

Published: 8 August 2017

The discovery of a new biological pathway involved in pain processing offers hope of using existing cancer drugs to replace the use of opioids in chronic pain treatment, according to scientists at...

The real- and growing- effects of fake pills

Published: 27 October 2016

There is a placebo effect for both the patient who receives a placebo and the one who receives a real drug, according to Jeffrey Mogil, a professor in the department of psychology at McGill...

Featured research stories of 2015

Published: 4 December 2015

Could maple syrup help cut use of antibiotics?...

50th anniversary of "Pain Mechanisms: A New Theory"

Published: 17 November 2015

November 19 marks the 50th anniversary of the ground-breaking paper, “Pain Mechanisms: A New Theory” co-authored by McGill’s Ronald Melzack, and the late Patrick Wall, which introduced gate-control...

American Placebo

Published: 6 October 2015

A new study finds that rising placebo responses may play a part in the increasingly high failure rate for clinical trials of drugs designed to control chronic pain caused by nerve damage.

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