单选题 Pain, unfortunately, is a horrible necessity of life. It protects people by alerting them to things that might injure them. But some long-term pain has nothing to do with any obvious injury. One estimate suggests that one in six adults suffer from a "chronic pain" condition.
Steve McMahon, a pain researcher at King's College, London, says that if skin is damaged, for instance with a hot iron, an area of sensitivity develops around the outside of the burn where although untouched and undamaged by the iron the behavior of the nerve fibers is disrupted. As a result, heightened sensitivity and abnormal pain sensations occur in the surrounding skin. Chronic pain, he says, may similarly be caused not by damage to the body, but because weak pain signals become amplified.
This would also help explain why chronic pains such as lower-back pain and osteoarthritis fail to respond well to traditional pain therapies. But now an entirely new kind of drug, called Tanezumab, has been developed. It is an antibody for a protein called nerve growth factor (NGF), which is vital for new nerve growth during development. NGF, it turns out, is also crucial in the regulation of the sensitisation of pain in chronic conditions.
Kenneth Verburg, one of the researchers involved in the development of Tanezumab at Pfizer, says it is not exactly clear what role NGF plays in normal physiology, but after an injury which involves tissue damage and inflammation, levels of NGF increase dramatically. NGF seems to be involved in transmitting the pain signal. As a consequence, blocking NGF reduces chronic pain.
Tanezumab must still complete the final stages of clinical trials before it can become a weapon in the toolkit for reducing human suffering. But unexpected pains do not always come from the body. According to Irene Tracey, a pain researcher at the University of Oxford, how pain is experienced also depends upon a person's state of mind. If successive patients suffer the same burn, the extent to which it hurts will depend on whether one is anxious, depressed, happy or distracted.
Such ideas are being explored with brain scans which suggest that even if a low level of pain is being sent to the brain, the signal can be turned up by the "mind" itself. Indeed, patients can even be tricked into feeling pain.
In one experiment volunteers were given a powerful analgesic and subjected to a painful stimulus—which, because of the analgesic, they could not feel. Then they were told the drug had worn off (although it had not), and subsequently complained that the stimulus hurt.
People can, therefore, feel pain simply because it is expected. They can fail to feel pain for exactly the same reasons, for example when they are given placebos or are distracted. But although pain may be subjective, that does not mean the final experience is controlled solely by the mind.
A recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that genes play a role in determining sensitivity to pain. One gene, known as SCN9A, codes for a protein that allows the channels along which nerve signals are transmitted to remain active for longer and thus transmit more pain signals. It seems likely that this protein will attract a great deal more analgesic research. Variations in SCN9A may also explain why some patients prefer different classes of painkillers.
Although pain may be a horrible necessity, there is no doubt that humanity could cope with far less of the chronic sort. Understanding how the mind, the body and people's genes interact to cause pain should bring more relief.

单选题 The word that Steve McMahon says is mentioned to ______.
A. stress the chronic pain caused by amplified signals
B. explain what the chronic pain is
C. introduce the topic of Tanezumab
D. tell us a hot iron can disrupt the behavior of the nerve fibers

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 本题是文章结构题。根据题干中的人名Steve McMahon定位至第二段。本段都是SteveMcMahon讲的话，提出了“慢性疼痛，不是肢体损伤导致的，而是因为那些微弱的疼痛信号被扩大”的观点，由此很容易错选A选项，但第三段话锋一转，提出了Tanezumab这种新药的问世。显然作者重点在论述Tanezumab。可见文章第二段Steve McMahon说的话只是用来引出Tanezumab这种新药。故c正确。选项A、D都是Steve McMahon说的话，体现不出说话的目的性，故排除。选项B很容易受第一段的影响，但综观全文，应了解文章重点不是讲慢性疼痛，只是为了引出后文对疼痛的研究。

单选题 According to Irene Tracey, how pain is experienced has something to do with ______.
A. whether it is chronic pain B. a person's state of mind
C. a person's capability of bearing D. a person's physical condition

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】[解析] 本题是细节题，主要考查对题意的把握。根据题中的人名Irene Tracey，定位到第五段：“According to Irene Tracey…how pain is experienced also depends upon a person's state of mind. ……人如何感觉疼痛，还取决于一个人的精神状态。”由此得出选项B正确。由全文最后一句总结可看出，本文讲的是精神、肢体和人类基因对疼痛的缓解，A选项是说疼痛取决于是不是慢性疼痛，不符合常识，故A错误。第五～八段得到结论：疼痛的感觉程度还取决于人的主观感觉，而不是一个人的忍受力，故c错误。根据第五段中的But unexpected pains do not always come from the body(但是疼痛不仅仅来自于身体状况)可以得出身体状况也是感觉疼痛的原因之一，但它不符合题干“根据Irene Tracey的解释”，故D错误。

单选题 According to the text, Tanezumab is ______.
A. a company's name B. a drug
C. a kind of pain D. a person's name

单选题 It can be inferred from the text that ______.
A. Tanezumab may become an effective drug to reduce pain in the future
B. genes play a role in determining sensitivity to pain
C. how pain is experienced depends upon a person's state of mind
D. lower-back pain fails to respond well to traditional pain therapies

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 本题是推断题，主要考查对全文的理解。文章第一、二段引出疼痛这个话题，第三、四段由疼痛引出对Tanezumab这种药物的介绍，它可以减轻慢性疼痛，第五～八段说明感觉疼痛的程度与人主观意识有关，第九段讲基因也决定着人的疼痛敏感度，第十段总结全文。由此可看出选项A符合第三、四段的内容。另外，第五段亦有提及“在成为减轻人类疼痛的有利武器之前，Tanezumab还必须完成最后的临床实验阶段。”故A正确。选项B是文中第九段中的原话，而题干要求从文中能得出推断的结论，故B错误。同理可知选项C、D错误，选项Cc原话在第五段中，选项D原话在第三段中。