Combination of paracetamol or ketamine with meperidine enhances antinociception

Abstract

Objectives: Dealing with pain is one of the most important issues of medicine. All of the studies aim to find a drug or combination of drugs in order to have more effective analgesia and less side effects. In this study, we aimed to investigate the antinociceptive effects of combination of paracetamol or ketamine with meperidine. Methods: In this study, we evaluated the systemic antinociceptive effects of meperidine, paracetamol, and ketamine one by one with their combinations. We used 50 mice (weighing 25-30 g), which were divided into 5 groups with each group consisting of 10 mice. Meperidine was applied to animals with increasing doses and their tail flick latencies (TFL) were noted at 20, 40, 60, 90, 120, 180, and 240 min. The same protocol was repeated after the combination of meperidine with paracetamol or ketamine. Results: There was no analgesic effect on low doses of ketamine and paracetamol at TFL measurements. But the combination of low doses of these drugs with meperidine significantly increased TFL (p < 0.05). Conclusion: It was observed that meperidine + ketamine and meperidine + paracetamol combinations have potent analgesic effect.