Skip to navigation | Skip to content  Loss of pain and smell has
a genetic link  feeling pain  Pain and smell sensations have
more in common than you think (Source: Shaun Lowe/iStockphoto)
Professor Frank Zufall, of the University of Saarland School of
Medicine, in Germany, and colleagues, report their findings
online this week in the journal Nature.  The researchers tested
three people in their 30s with a rare genetic inability to feel
pain (congenital analgesia) and found they were unable to smell
at all (a condition known as anosmia).  Interestingly, none of
the subjects had been aware that they could not smell.  Being
unable to feel pain sounds enticing, but people with congenital
analgesia frequently bite their tongues, break bones or burn
themselves without being aware of it, sometimes leading to
severe damage.  On the plus side, two of the individuals in the
study had given birth with completely pain-free labour.  It is
known that the inability to feel pain is due to a particular
defective gene (SCN9