Jab that could kill back pain ‘for 5 weeks’

A SINGLE injection could ease backache and other chronically painful conditions for weeks at a time, scientists believe.

They have shown that stem cells, the body’s ‘master cells’, release a natural painkiller, with incredible results.

Just one dose of the cells relieved pain in mice with nerve damage for more than a month. Professor Ru-Rong Ji, head of pain research at Duke University in North Carolina, said: ‘This analgesic effect was amazing. Normally, if you give an analgesic, you see pain relief for a few hours, at most a few days.

‘But with bone marrow stem cells, after a single injection we saw pain relief over four to five weeks.’

The professor now wants to engineer the stem cells to make more of the painkiller.

He believes the jabs could help amputees and cancer patients, as well as people with lower back pain, the Journal of Clinical Investigation reports.

An estimated four in five Britons suffer back problems at some point in their life and the condition is behind more GP visits each year than any condition, other than the common cold.

Back pain is the top cause of ‘years lived in disability’ in Britain and worldwide.

And it is starting to take effect much earlier, with almost half of under-30s in pain.

Days and nights spent slouched on chairs and sofas while hunched over mobile phones and tablet computers is blamed for children as young as 12 seeking treatment for the ailment.