Gastrointestinal sensory function in normal and diseased states

Funding Activity

Website
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/104814

Funding Status
Closed

Does something not look right? The information on this page has been harvested from data sources that may not be up to date. We continue to work with information providers to improve coverage and quality. To report an issue, use the .

Funded Activity Summary

Chronic pain and discomfort from the digestive system is a major health care issue world-wide. There is currently no effective treatment for these problems, which often have no apparent organic cause. Lack of treatment is due to a lack of understanding about how sensations are transmitted from the digestive system to the brain. Our research group has unique and powerful techniques that allow us to probe the basic mechanisms of sensory function, and make rapid progress towards finding drugs that reduce specific types of sensory signals from the gut. We shall investigate sensory mechanisms in the upper and lower regions of the gut, where symptoms are most prevalent in diseases such as non-cardiac chest pain, functional dyspepsia and irritable bowel syndrome. Six aspects of sensory nerve endings in the gut are to be investigated: 1. The grouping of endings into functional classes (similar to touch or pressure receptors in skin) 2. How endings respond to chemicals and hormones found in the gut 3. How currently available drugs may be useful in reducing sensitivity 4. The mechanisms by which inflammation affects sensitivity 5. How nerve growth factors may trigger changes in sensitivity 6. How pores or channels in nerve endings determine their function

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2000

End Date: 01-01-2004

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $691,026.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Medical bacteriology

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Autonomic nervous system- physiopathology | Colonic diseases, functional- physiopathology | Functional dyspepsia | Functional gastrointestinal diseases | Irritable bowel syndrome | Mechanoreceptors | Neurons-afferent-physiology | Non-cardiac chest pain | Visceral afferents- physiology and pharmacology | Visceral pain

Related Links