The Effects of Different doses of methylene blue over nociception

Bulai Silvia Mihaela 1, Coman Ioana 1, Ionescu Mihaela 1, Luca Andrei 2

1 Faculty of medicine, University of Medicine and Pharmacy ‘’ Gr. T. Popa ‘’ Iasi, Romania

2 Pathophysiology Department, University of Medicine and Pharmacy ‘’ Gr. T. Popa ‘’ Iasi,

Romania

Background: Methylene blue (MB) is a synthetic redox compound, it improves mitochondrial

respiration and the metabolic rate by stimulating mitochondrial IV complex by up to 30% and
also NO-synthases (ROS), monoamine oxidases A (MAO) and disulfide reductases.

Objective: The aim of our study was to assess the effect of different doses of MB over
nociception after a single dose, intrapertioneal administration.

Material and methods: To evaluate the effect of MB over nociception we chose the doses of 1
mg/kg, 5 mg/kg respectively 10 mg/kg bw administered intraperitoneal. Mice were BALB/C
male mice (n=24), 30+/-2g, nociception was evaluated using the tail flick (TFT) and hot plate
test (HPT) that were performed at 30, 60, 120, 180 and respectively 4h after administration.
Statistical analysis was performed with repeated measures ANOVA and student t test in SPSS
v19.0.

Results: On the TFT only 10 mg/kg bw have shown antinociceptive effect (p = 0.03) with
gradual increasing in the latency. On the HPT administration of 10 mg/kg bw lead to an
analgesic effect 30 minutes with a maximum effect at 1 respectively 2h after administration.
5mg/kg bw had an analgesic effect on the HPT (p<0.01, F(1,18)=21.15), a time effect and an
interaction between the two with statistical significance (p<0.01) with a progressive increase in
pain perception (7.57±2.27 at 30 mins to 8.4±3.18 at 4h).

Conclusions: The study demonstrated that methylene blue has an analgesic effect, and even if it
requires further investigation, the data suggests that the effect may be related to serotonergic
mediation.