Pain medicine is usually imprecise. To neutralise pain in one particular area, a drug has to travel in the bloodstream throughout the body, weakening its specific effect and often leading to unpleasant side-effects. Thus, many doses that are sufficient to provide pain relief also pose some risk to the patient. The ideal analgesic would provide localised pain relief in small doses with minimal side-effects. Aaron Filler, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles, believes he has found one. The secret lies not in the painkiller itself, but in the method for delivering it direct to the nerves causing the pain.
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