| Abstract No.: | C-C3122 |
| Country: | Kenya |
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| Title: | AFRICA IS MORE OF A SPECTATOR IN THE GLOBAL PAIN RESEARCH: IS THIS JUSTIFIABLE? |
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| Authors/Affiliations: | 1 Sammy Kimoloi*;
1 Biomedical Sciences Graduate Programme, Department of Biomedical Sciences and Technology, Maseno University, Kisumu, Kenya
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| Content: | Background: The African continent is truly unique in terms of its fauna, flora and human ethnic diversity, as well as the nature and incidences of painful clinical conditions. The indigenous flora of Africa for instance, is a unique source of a wide range of naturally occurring analgesic substances and chemicals that can be used as probes or tools in pain research. Similarly the range of African indigenous animal species that can be used as novel behavioral pain models or studied to give more insight into such aspects as; evolution of pain neural pathways, neural mechanisms of pain and the natural opiod analgesic systems, is truly remarkable. As the global knowledge on pain and its management continues to grow tremendously, however, one can wonder whether Africa is exploiting its unique resources to make a meaningful contribution.
Objectives: The objective of this paper was to evaluate the contribution of the African continent to the global pain research in the last 5 years and to explore what the continent can further contribute through exploitation of its unique natural resources.
Methodology: Articles on various aspects of pain that was published between 2003 and 2007 in two journals, namely journal of pain and the journal of pain and symptom management was searched and reviewed. Original research articles, some letters and case studies was then categorized on the basis of continent where the studies were conducted, reviews were categorized based on the author’s continental affiliation. The continents considered were Africa, Asia, N. America, S. America, Europe and Oceania. Further search was conducted in the online data base medline for published original research on various aspects of pain.
Results: Of the 620 publications searched and reviewed in the journal of pain only 2(0.3%) was from Africa, 7 (1%) was from South America, 11 (1.8%) from Oceania, 27 (4%) was from Asia, 79 (13%) was from Europe and 494 (80%) was from North America. Of the 357 publications reviewed in the journal of pain and symptom management only 1 (0.3%) was from Africa, 3 (0.84%) was from South America, 8 (2.24%) was from Oceania, 36 (10.08%) was from Asia, 126 (35.3 %) was from Europe and 183 (51.3%) was from North America.
Conclusions: The African continent contributes very little to the global pain research, despite of the many areas that it can make substantial contribution. Africa can contribute a lot knowledge about the ethnic and transcultural disparity in pain prevalence, severity, and perceptions. Studies of neural mechanisms of pain and neural pathways in animal species native to Africa can greatly further our understanding of pain and its evolution in mammals. The African fauna can also be studied to come up with novel behavioral and painful disease models. On the other hand the African flora can be screened for analgesic or pain inducing substances and their mechanisms of action studied. Furthermore, the many tropical diseases, accompanied by pain offer a unique opportunity of furthering our knowledge on pain. |
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