Facial pain and anxiety-like behavior are reduced by pregabalin in a model of facial carcinoma in rats.

Facial pain and anxiety-like behavior are reduced by pregabalin in a model of facial carcinoma in rats. Neuropharmacology. 2017 Aug 01;: Authors: Gambeta E, Kopruszinski CM, Dos Reis RC, Zanoveli JM, Chichorro JG Abstract Pain and anxiety are common symptoms in head and neck cancer patients. The anticonvulsant pregabalin has therapeutic indication for the treatment of pain and anxiety, and may represent a useful drug for both conditions. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between pain and anxiety in rats with facial carcinoma, as the influence of pregabalin treatment in both aspects. Facial carcinoma was induced by subcutaneous inoculation of Walker-256 tumor cells in the vibrissa pad of Wistar rats. On day 6 after inoculation spontaneous facial grooming and conditioned place preference were assessed as non-evoked pain measurements and facial mechanical hyperalgesia were assessed 3 and 6 days after tumor cells inoculation. Moreover, anxiety-like behavior was evaluated on the elevated plus maze and light-dark transition tests at the same time points. The effect of pregabalin treatment (30 mg/kg, p.o.) was evaluated in all tests. Our results demonstrated that pregabalin treatment reduced the spontaneous facial grooming and induced conditioned place preference 6 days post tumor inoculation. Tumor-bearing rats developed mechanical hyperalgesia starting 3 days post tumor induction, which was also significant ...
Source: Neuropharmacology - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Authors: Tags: Neuropharmacology Source Type: research