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  3. Pain, unfortunately, is a horrible necessity of life. It protects people by alerting them to things that might injure them. But

Pain, unfortunately, is a horrible necessity of life. It protects people by alerting them to things that might injure them. But

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问题    Pain, unfortunately, is a horrible necessity of life. It protects people by alerting them to things that might injure them. But some long-term pain has nothing to do with any obvious injury. One estimate suggests that one in six adults suffer from a "chronic pain" condition. Steve McMahon, a pain researcher at King’s College, London, says that if skin is damaged, for instance with a hot iron, an area of sensitivity develops around the outside of the burn where although untouched and undamaged by the iron the behaviour of the nerve fibres is disrupted. As a result, heightened sensitivity and abnormal pain sensations occur in the surrounding skin. Chronic pain, he says, may similarly be caused not by damage to the body, but because weak pain signals become amplified.
   This would also help explain why chronic pains such as lower-back pain and arthritis fail to respond well to traditional pain therapies. But now an entirely new kind of drug, called Tanezumab, has been developed. It is an antibody for a protein called nerve growth factor (NGF), which is vital for new nerve growth during development. NGF, it turns out, is also crucial in the regulation of the sensitisation of pain in chronic conditions. After an injury which involves tissue damage and inflammation, levels of NGF increase dramatically. NGF seems to be involved in transmitting the pain signal. As a consequence, blocking NGF reduces chronic pain.
   Tanezumab must still complete the final stages of clinical trials before it can become a weapon for reducing human suffering. But unexpected pains do not always come from the body. According to Irene Tracey, a pain researcher at the University of Oxford, how pain is experienced also depends upon a person’s state of mind. If successive patients suffer the same burn, the extent to which it hurts will depend on whether one is anxious, depressed, happy or distracted.
   Such ideas are being explored with brain scans which suggest that even if a low level of pain is being sent to the brain, the signal can be turned up by the "mind" itself. Indeed, patients can even be tricked into feeling pain. People can feel pain simply because it is expected. They can fail to feel pain for exactly the same reasons, for example when they are given placebos (a substance containing no medication and given to reinforce a patient’s expectation to get well) or are distracted. But although pain may be subjective, that does not mean the final experience is controlled solely by the mind.
   A recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that genes play a role in determining sensitivity to pain. One gene, known as SCN9A, codes for a protein that allows the channels along which nerve signals are transmitted to remain active for longer and thus transmit more pain signals. It seems likely that this protein will attract a great deal more analgesic research. Variations in SCN9A may also explain why some patients prefer different classes of painkillers.
   Although pain may be a horrible necessity, there is no doubt that humanity could cope with far less of the chronic sort. Understanding how the mind, the body and people’s genes interact to cause pain should bring more relief.
   [A] has got a new finding about gene’s effect on our sensitivity to pain.
   [B] holds that heightened sensitivity to pain may lead to chronic pain.
   [C] showed how people controlled their sense of pain by the mind.
   [D] is involved in the forming of a protein that can make us feel more pain.
   [E] suggests that people are usually cheated by abnormal signals when injured.
   [F] can alleviate chronic pain by blocking the transmission of pain signals.
   [G] indicates that state of mind has an influence on the feeling of pain.
Irene Tracey’s research
选项
答案G
解析 Irene Tracey出现在第三段。该段第三句说，根据Irene Tracey所言：人对疼痛的感觉也取决于其精神状态。接着下一句进一步解释——如果两个患者相继遭受到同样的烧伤，那么疼痛的程度则取决于他们是否焦虑、沮丧、开心或者分神。G中的state of mind是文中的原词复现，has an influence on the feeling of pain是对how pain is experienced…depends upon的转述，故确定G为答案。
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