The aim of the present study was to evaluate the central antinociceptive effects of eugenol after intraperitoneal administration. Experiments were carried out using male Sprague-Dawley rats. Subcutaneous injection of 5% formalin-induced nociceptive behavioral responses was used as the pain model. Subcutaneous injection of 5% formalin significantly produced nociceptive responses by increasing the licking time during nociceptive behavior. Subsequent intraperitoneal injection of 100 mg/kg of eugenol led to a significant decrease in the licking time. However, low dose of eugenol (50 mg/kg) did not affect the nociceptive behavioral responses produced by subcutaneous injection of formalin. Intrathecal injection of 30 μg of naloxone, an opioid receptor antagonist, significantly blocked antinociceptive effects produced by intraperitoneal injection of eugenol. Neither intrathecal injection of methysergide (30 μg), a serotonin receptor antagonist nor phentolamine (30 μg), an α-adrenergic receptor antagonist influenced antinociceptive effects of eugenol, as compared to the vehicle treatment. These results suggest that central opioid pathway participates in mediating the antinociceptive effects of eugenol.

Previous clinical studies have demonstrated that gabapentin, a drug that binds to the voltage-gated calcium channel α2δ1 subunit proteins, is effective in the management of neuropathic pain, but there is limited evidence that addresses the participation of glial cells in the antiallodynic effects of this drug. The present study investigated the participation of glial cells in the anti-nociceptive effects of gabapentin in rats with trigeminal neuropathic pain produced by mal-positioned dental implants. Under anesthesia, the left mandibular second molar was extracted and replaced by a miniature dental implant to induce injury to the inferior alveolar nerve. Mal-positioned dental implants significantly decreased the air-puff thresholds both ipsilateral and contralateral to the injury site. Gabapentin was administered intracisternally beginning on postoperative day (POD) 1 or on POD 7 for three days. Early or late treatment with 0.3, 3, or 30 μg of gabapentin produced significant anti-allodynic effect in the rats with mal-positioned dental implants. On POD 9, in the mal-positioned dental implants group, OX-42, a microglia marker, and GFAP, an astrocyte marker, were found to be up-regulated in the medullary dorsal horn, compared with the naive group. However, the intracisternal administration of gabapentin (30 μg) failed to reduce the number of activated microglia or astrocytes in the medullary dorsal horn. These findings suggest that gabapentin produces significant antinociceptive effects, which are not mediated by the inhibition of glial cell function in the medullary dorsal horn, in a rat model of trigeminal neuropathic pain.

Whole-body y-irradiation(WBI), which produces an oxidative stress, is reported to attenuate the acute antinociceptive action of morphine (aμ-opioid receptor agonist), but not DPLPE (að-opioid receptor agonist), in mice. Recently, we also reported that antinociceptive effect of morphine, but not β-endorphin (a novel ε-opioid receptor agonist), was attenuated by oxidative stress. These findings prompted us to investigate the effect of WBI on the antinociception of morphine and β-endorphin in mice. Mice were exposed to WBI (5 Gy) from a 60Co gamma-source and tested 2 hours later for antinociception produced by intracerebroventricular administration of morphine or β-endorphin using the hot water tail-immersion and the writhing tests. WBI significantly attenuated the antinociception produced by morphine only in the hot water tail-immersion test, whereas the antinociception of -endorphin was significantly potentiated by WBI in both tests. These results demonstrate a differential sensitivity of μ- and ε-opioid receptors to WBI, and support the hypothesis that morphine and β-endorphin administered supraspinally produce antinociception by different neuronal mechanisms.

The aerial part of Siegesbeckia pubescens (Compositae) has been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and hypertension in the Oriental medicine. This crude drug has been used without process (SP-0) or with three times-process of steaming and drying (SP-3) or the nine times of that process (SP-9). To search for the antinociceptive anti-inflammatory components from this crude drug, activity-directed fractionation was performed on this crude drug. Since the CHCl3 extract was shown to have a more potent effect than other extracts, it was subjected to silica gel & ODS column chromatography to yield two diterpene compounds (1). Compound 1 was structurally identified as ent-16 (H, 17-hydroxykauran-19-oic acid, which were tentatively named siegeskaurolic acid A. A main diterpene, siegeskaurolic acid A was tested for the antiiflammatory antinociceptive effects using both hot plate- and writhing anti-nociceptive assays and carrageenan-induced anti-inflammatory assays in mice and rats. Pretreatment with siegeskaurolic acid A (20 and 30mg/kg) significantly reduced the stretching episodes, action time of mice and carrageenan-induced edema. These results support that siegeskaurolic acid is a main diterpene responsible for antinociceptive and antiiflammatory action of S. pubescens. In addition, the assays on SP-0, SP-3 and SP-9 produced the experimental results that SP-9 had more significant effects than other two crude drugs. These results suggest that the processing on the original plant may lead to the higher pharmacological effect.