title: Potentiation of morphine analgesia in rats given a single exposure to restraint stress immobilization.
abstract: Rats exposed to restraint stress and injected with morphine show significantly greater increases in tail-flick latency compared to unstressed rats. However, it is not necessary for rats to be restrained at the time of testing to elicit a potentiated analgesic response to morphine. We reported recently that analgesia induced by 4.0 mg/kg morphine was significantly potentiated in rats that had been restrained for only 1 h at 24 h prior to testing. One purpose of the present study was to extend this observation by determining the ability of a single exposure to restraint stress to potentiate dose-dependently morphine (0.0, 2.0, 4.0, and 8.0 mg/kg)-induced analgesia in the tail-flick test. A second purpose was to assess the generality of the phenomenon by determining whether prior restraint would potentiate the analgesic effect of morphine in another common analgesic assay, the hot-plate test. Dose- and time-course (20-120 min) curves for morphine were generated in rats exposed to one of two treatments: no restraint stress (NS) and a single exposure to 1 h of restraint (RS). Rats subjected to 1 h of restraint and tested 24 h later displayed significant time- and dose-dependent potentiation (1.3-2.0-fold) of morphine-induced analgesia compared to unstressed rats in both the tail-flick and hot-plate tests. These results demonstrate that a single period of restraint is sufficient to activate the mechanisms responsible for potentiation of morphine-induced analgesia and that the degree to which stress modified morphine's analgesia can be demonstrated using both the tail-flick and hot-plate assays.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322.
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Calcagnetti
authors.forename: S G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Holtzman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D006358:Hot Temperature; D008297:Male; D009020:Morphine / Q000494:pharmacology*; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000187:drug effects*; D012149:Restraint, Physical; D013312:Stress, Physiological / Q000503:physiopathology*
chemical_list: D009020:Morphine