• Justin L Hay, Jahangir Kaboutari, Jason M White, Abdallah Salem, and Rod Irvine.
• Discipline of Pharmacology, Level 5, Medical School North, University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia. justin.hay@alumni.adelaide.edu.au
• Eur. J. Pharmacol. 2010 Jan 25;626(2-3):229-33.

AbstractMethadone used for opioid dependence therapy is associated with increased pain sensitivity. This study aimed to investigate whether methadone administration lowers nociceptive threshold in adult male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats, and if this threshold could be altered by the NMDA receptor antagonist memantine. Rats were implanted with osmotic pumps delivering 1mg/kg/day methadone (n=6), or saline placebo (n=6) (0.51 microl/h). A separate cohort of rats received either methadone 1mg/kg/day (n=8) or methadone 1mg/kg/day with 20mg/kg/day memantine (n=8). Nociception was measured by the Hargreave's paw withdrawal test. Baseline nociception was measured on day 0 prior to osmotic pump implantation and was measured daily for the following 21 days. Osmotic pumps were removed following nociceptive testing on day 14. Methadone only treated rats had a mean paw withdrawal latency significantly lower than the corresponding values for saline on days 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, and 17 (P<0.05). At all other time points the mean paw withdrawal latency was not significantly different from saline (P>0.05). Paw withdrawal latency of rats treated with methadone co-administered with memantine did not differ significantly compared to methadone only (P>0.05). This demonstrates that methadone induces hyperalgesia in the SD rat yet this hyperalgesia resolves following discontinuation of methadone administration. Furthermore, memantine does not alter the development of methadone-induced hyperalgesia.

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