“Sng”, or sng-pain, is a Taiwanese term that denotes an acid-like discomfort or “pain” associated with tissue acidosis, which is one of the top complaints in pain clinics. In Taiwan, the cost spent on medical care related to musculoskeletal pain is the highest among all diseases. However, such chronic pain is often difficult to treat effectively. In order to solve the unmet medical needs of intractable pain, it is essential for understanding the etiology of that “pain” and its subtypes. Dr. Chih-Cheng Chen and his research team from Academia Sinica, supported by National Science and Technology Council’s Brain Technology Project and the Investigator Award of Academia Sinica, has found sng and pain are 2 different somatosensory functions, with proprioceptors which are the sngceptors to sense tissue acidosis and to trigger the acid-induced priming and “pain” chronicity in moused models of fibromyalgia. These findings have been recently published in the prestigious international journal "Science Advances."
Dr. Chen has led an interdisciplinary research team to address the somatosensory function of acid-sensation and distinguish it from pain sensation (nociception). Dr. Chen and collaborators further demonstrated proprioceptors are the sngceptors to trigger acid-induced “pain” chronicity. This result has overturned medical concepts that have prevailed for the past 50 years. The research team establishes a novel theory of “Sngception”. “Sng” is the Romanization form of the Taiwanese word “痠”. Of note, sng is derived from a linguistic phenomenon where both “sour taste” and muscle soreness are encoded in the same word in the Taiwanese language, which is only unique to Sino-Tibet language family, but not in other languages. In the study published in Science Advances, international collaborators from Germany, UK, and USA have all endorsed the concept of sng and sngception. Moreover, while the sngception term was published in the international prestigious journal, it tells the international recognition of the originality of the sng and sngception rooted from Taiwan’s academia. This makes Taiwan being the trend setter in the emerging field of sngception and sng medicine.
Dr. Chen and collaborators have successfully implemented the sng assessment in the Computerized Physician Order Entry system in 3 major hospitals in Taipei City and New Taipei City, and aimed to promote it to major hospitals all over Taiwan. Letting the patients understand the difference between sng and pain is essential for the precision medicine in sng and pain management, so that we can avoid the usage of non-effective pain killers for sng and facilitate the development of novel treatments for chronic sng. Of note, the annual users of pain killers is the top one among all drugs covered by the Taiwan National Health Insurance. In the future, it may save significant amount of annual cost of Taiwan’s medical care by reducing the use of non-necessary pain killers in chronic sng. Finding sngceptors would have profound impacts on our society, economics, and biomedical technology. To push forward, Chen’s team will soon establish the first version of Sng Taxonomy to shape a brand new “Sng medicine” in parallel to “pain medicine” and to hail the new era of sng-pain precision medicine.
Dr. Chen’s sngception theory is a paradigm-shifting discovery that has fundamentally changed our understanding of human sensory systems and challenged the central dogma of pain biology that has been established in the past 50 years. With the finding of sngceptors, we now have a neurobiological basis of the difference between sng and pain, which annotates a new era of sng medicine. Further research into the development of sng-killers and sng management is ushering in a new wave of revolution in the biomedical industry and medical field, as well as bringing hope for millions of patients suffering from intractable sng.
Media Contact：
Yih-Ru Chen
Program Manager
Department of Life Sciences
National Science and Technology Council
Phone: +886-02-2737-7461
E-mail: cyr202407@nstc.gov.tw
