Romanian Society of Pharmaceutical Sciences

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ANTI-INFLAMMATORY EFFECTS OF LOCALLY VERSUS SYSTEMIC INJECTED MORPHINE ON CHEMICALLY INDUCED INFLAMMATION: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANIMAL STUDY

NADER-MUGUREL JAFAL1, SMARANDA STOLERU1*, AURELIAN ZUGRAVU1, GIANMARCO GRAZIOSI 2, CARMEN ORBAN2, MIHAI POPESCU2, ANA VĂTĂȘESCU BALCAN1, ION FULGA1

1 Discipline of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, Faculty of Medicine, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania
2 “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania

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The current role of opioids in medical practice focuses on their well-known analgesic effect, but recently different studies were aimed to analyse their potential anti-inflammatory effect at both local and systemic levels. Our experimental animal study was aimed to determine the effects of different concentrations of morphine injected either locally or intraperitoneally on chemically inflamed paw volumes. Male Wistar rats were randomly assigned to six groups and injected with a single intraplantar injection of carrageenan 1% and subsequently another injection with either normal saline or morphine according to their group. Measurements with a plethysmometer were taken at 0, 6, 24, 48 and 72 hours after the first injection. Our experiment shows a statistically significant decrease in paw volume of rats injected with 5mg/kg of intraplantar morphine sulphate, thus demonstrating a local anti-inflammatory effect of high-dose morphine. These data provide evidence that opioids do have a role in inflammation and suggest that they could play a therapeutic role in anti-inflammatory treatment.