VOA常速英语2013--大脑扫描数据库旨在帮助慢性疼痛的研究（在线收听）

Brain Scan Database Aims to Accelerate Chronic Pain Research 大脑扫描数据库旨在帮助慢性疼痛的研究

LOS ANGELES — Many people around the world suffer from chronic pain - from pain in the joints to migraines to abdominal pain. Many scientists now believe that kind of pain - in whatever part of the body - has a common connection to the brain. The University of California Los Angeles is now developing an international database of brain images of hundreds of chronic pain patients. So far, they include people from North America and Europe. The goal: to accelerate research and develop better ways to treat chronic pain.

Carolyn Crow is no stranger to pain.

卡洛琳·克洛对疼痛感并不陌生。

“Sometimes I'll just have a background dull ache, you know, all the time.

“有时我的后背会隐隐作痛,你知道,一直以来的老毛病了。

Sometimes there's cramping that's so bad that it'll just kind of almost double you over in pain.”

有时严重的绞痛会让你的痛苦加倍。”

The pain caused by irritable bowel syndrome, chronic disease that currently has no cure.

由过敏性肠综合症,慢性疾病引发的疼痛目前并无良药。

UCLA Gastroenterologist Emeran Mayer said this disease is not the only cause of chronic pain in the body.

加州大学洛杉矶分校胃肠病学家艾默兰·梅耶尔表示这种疾病并不是身体内慢性疼痛的唯一原因。

And often patients often can only suffer.

而病人通常只能默默忍受。

“One of the big things in pain research has been the failure to really come up with major breakthroughs in treatments.”

“疼痛研究最大的问题是一直未能真正在治疗方面取得重大突破。”

It is an effort to find new treatment options, Mayer is working on a new field of study that links chronic pain to biological changes in the brain.

找到新的治疗方案需要努力,梅耶尔正在一个将慢性疼痛与大脑中的生物变化联系起来的新研究领域工作。

The Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress at UCLA serves as the main hub for the first standardized database for brain imaging connected to chronic pain.

加州大学洛杉矶分校奥本海默中心应激神经生物学研究是脑成像与慢性疼痛第一标准化数据库的主要中心。

“So I think a lot of people now agree with the concept that chronic pain is a brain disease.

“所以我认为很多人现在接受这一概念,即慢性疼痛是一种大脑疾病。

It may start anywhere in the body when you have acute pain, but once it becomes a chronic pain syndrome it does become a brain disease,” said Mayer.

当你感到剧烈疼痛它可能在身体的任何地方已经开始,但是一旦成为慢性疼痛综合征它就成了一种大脑疾病,” 梅耶尔说道。

Kirsten Tillisch, a professor in UCLA's Division of Digestive Diseases, said the database allows doctors to take a more holistic approach in chronic pain research.

加州大学洛杉矶分校消化疾病部门的柯尔斯顿·特利西教授表示系统数据库允许医生在慢性疼痛的研究上采取更全面的方法。

“One of the failures of Western medicine and I think our research approaches is how we diced up the human body and how we've diced up research into these little silos that work very independently.”

“这是西医失败的其中一个原因而且我认为我们的研究方法是如何划分人体以及我们研究如何划分成非常独立的工作。”

Mayer said Western scientists are starting to look more closely at how mind, body and environment effect each other, and his database is one example.

梅耶尔表示西方科学家正开始更仔细地研究思想、身体和环境如何互相影响,而且他的数据库就是一个例子。

“Big data, medicine, and analysis is essentially doing the same thing the ancient Chinese did by observation.

“庞大数据、医学及分析本质上和中国古人通过观察做的事情有异曲同工之处。

We do it by observing and analyzing very large data sets and trying to see are there patterns in there that hang together by biologically,” said Mayer.

我们通过观察和分析非常庞大的数据找出是否有生物性结合在一起的模式。”梅耶尔说道。

And Tillisch said new technology makes this possible.

而特利西称新技术使这成为可能。

“You know when I started this type of work ten years ago there, we didn't have computing power to do this type of analysis.

“你知道当我10年前开始这种类型的研究,我们没有计算机进行这种类型的分析。

In the brain alone in the last decade it's really exploded what we could look at.”

过去十年里单单凭借大脑真的让我们对所见感到抓狂。”

The database currently holds the brain scans of more than 500 patients from North America and Europe, and UCLA is in the process of acquiring more.

数据库目前存有超过500例来自北美和欧洲病人的大脑扫描，而加州大学洛杉矶分校正在获取更多。

Mayer hopes to eventually include brain images of people from Asian countries, plus other biological markers that can help researchers understand pain and find treatments that can help improve the quality of life for patients such as Carolyn Crow.

梅耶尔希望最终包括来自亚洲国家的大脑图像,加上其他生物标记,可以帮助研究人员更为了解疼痛并找寻治疗方法,从而帮助改善像是卡洛琳·克洛这种病人的生活质量。

“As a patient receiving care it makes you feel much better also to realize the doctor is treating you as a person and a whole being with many complicated parts,” said Crow.

“作为病人接受医疗服务使你感觉更好,也意识到医生是将你作为一个人对对待,一个有很多复杂部分的整体对待,” 克洛说道。

Images of Crow's brain also will be in the database.

克洛的大脑图像也将出现在数据库。

She hopes doctors might find a cure one day for her chronic pain.

她希望医生们终有一天会找出一种治疗慢性疼痛的方法。