Delivery is a stressful and risky event menacing the newborn. The mother-dependent respiration has to be replaced by autonomous pulmonary breathing immediately after delivery. If delayed, it may lead to deficient oxygen supply compromising survival and development of the central nervous system. Lack...

Developing new therapeutants for stroke requires animal models in which typical stroke outcomes can be detected. In rats, temporary occlusion of the middle cerebral artery (MCAo) closely resembles reversible human ischemic stroke, but most neuroprotection studies have used limited, short-term (1-2 w...

The role of alpha 1 receptors in antinociception was investigated in the formalin test, a well established test of tonic pain. The effect of systemic injections of selective alpha 1-adrenergic agonists (phenylephrine and methoxamine), a mixed alpha agonist selective for alpha 2 receptors (ST-91), an...

Dose-response curves for clonidine-produced analgesia in rats were constructed using the tail-flick and formalin tests. Subsequently, the relative role of alpha 1 and alpha 2 receptors in clonidine analgesia in each of these tests was determined using systemic administration of vehicle controls, tol...

Previous reports have suggested that tolerance to the antinociceptive effects of morphine does not develop in the formalin test. To re-examine these findings, morphine was administered via multiple injections or continuous infusion from 0 to 4 days prior to testing with either the formalin or tail-f...

Mental and neurological disorders are increasingly prevalent and constitute a major societal and economic burden worldwide. Many of these diseases and disorders are characterized by progressive deterioration over time, that ultimately results in identifiable symptoms that in turn dictate therapy. D...

It is well established that the developing brain is a highly dynamic environment that is susceptible to toxicity produced by a number of pharmacological, chemical and environmental insults. We report herein on permanent behavioural and morphological changes produced by exposing newborn rats to very ...

In previous studies from this laboratory it was found that dibutanoylmorphine (DBM) was more potent than morphine as an analgesic in rats and that it was less active than acetyl esters of morphine on behaviour. As DBM is a morphine prodrug, the aim of this work was to determine if rat brain homogena...

Exposing Sprague–Dawley rat pups to very low, sub-convulsant doses of domoic acid (DOM) during perinatal development has been previously shown to result in seizure-like activity in adulthood similar to partial complex epilepsy in humans, and to produce cellular and molecular changes in the dentate...

We have previously reported that neonatal rats display enhanced sensitivity to domoic acid relative to adults, and that perinatal injections of low doses of domoic acid alter early associational learning in the newborn rat. The current study was designed to further investigate the effects of low dos...

The pharmacokinetics of single-dose morphine sulphate (MS) administered intravenously (i.v.) and intramuscularly (i.m.) and of oral sustained-release morphine sulphate (OSRMS) were studied in dogs. Beagles (n = 6) were randomly assigned to six treatment groups using a Latin square design. Treatments...