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Correlation between body weight changes and postoperative pain in rats treated with meloxicam or buprenorphine

Lab Animal volume 38, pages 87–93 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

It is essential to identify objective and efficient methods of evaluating postoperative pain in rodents. The authors investigated whether postoperative changes in rates of body weight gain could serve as a measure of the efficacy of meloxicam or buprenorphine analgesia in growing rats. Young adult male Lewis rats underwent general endotracheal anesthesia and thoracotomy and were treated postoperatively for 3 d with saline (no analgesia), buprenorphine (six doses of 0.1 mg per kg) or meloxicam (three doses of 1 mg per kg). The authors evaluated rats' daily growth rates for 5 d after surgery and compared them with baseline (preoperative) growth rates. To discriminate between the effects of postoperative pain and other concurrent physiologic effects associated with anesthesia, thoracotomy or analgesia, the authors evaluated weight changes in multiple control groups. Treatment with buprenorphine in the absence of any other procedure or with anesthesia alone significantly affected rats' body weight. Notably, growth rate was maintained at near normal levels in rats treated postoperatively with meloxicam. These findings suggest that growth rate might serve as an efficient index of postoperative pain after major surgical procedures in young adult rats treated with meloxicam but not in rats treated with buprenorphine.

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Figure 1: Growth rates over 24-h periods in young adult rats that underwent various manipulations associated with a thoracotomy.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the surgical assistance of Xiaoyue “Jennifer” Hu and the technical assistance of Jean Wilson, Christi Hawley and Rudolph Beiler. This study was supported by the Section of Comparative Medicine and by NIH Grants R01HL078650 and NHLBIT32HLO795.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT

    Matthew P. Brennan &  Albert J. Sinusas

  2. Section of Comparative Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT

    Tamas L. Horvath &  Martha J. Harding

  3. Department of Anesthesiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT

    J.G. Collins

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Correspondence to Martha J. Harding.

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Brennan, M., Sinusas, A., Horvath, T. et al. Correlation between body weight changes and postoperative pain in rats treated with meloxicam or buprenorphine. Lab Anim 38, 87–93 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/laban0309-87

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