Abstract

The tricyclic antidepressant imipramine has shown analgesic effect in human clinical and experimental pain studies. The aim of the present study was to test the effect of imipramine on a pure short-term nociceptive stimulus with pin-prick pain quality. In a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover study, the hypoalgesic effect of a single oral dose of 100 mg imipramine was investigated in 10 healthy volunteers. Test procedures performed before and 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14 h after medication included determination of warmth and pin-prick pain thresholds to high-energy argon laser light stimulation on the hand, as well as laser-evoked cerebral potentials to suprathreshold stimulation. Both the warmth and the pin-prick pain thresholds ( p=0.49 and 0.85) and the root mean square of the laser-evoked potentials ( p=0.89) were unaltered by imipramine. It is concluded that a single oral dose of 100 mg imipramine has no effect on pin-prick pain. This study demonstrates the important fact that a drug may show clear analgesic effect in some experimental pain models while it is without effect in other models; e.g. imipramine is known to affect pain tolerance and summation thresholds. Pre-clinical tests of potentially analgesic drugs should therefore be based on different pain-stimulation modalities.

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