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Spinal combinations of alpha 2-adrenergic and mu- or delta- but not kappa-opioid agonists may be beneficial in the control of visceral pain.

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Lofexidine is well tolerated and more efficacious than placebo for reducing opioid withdrawal symptoms in inpatients undergoing medically supervised opioid detoxification.

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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.The clinical assessment and treatment of pain in the laboratory animal present unique challenges for scientific investigators, IACUCs, institutional veterinarians and regulatory agencies. Evaluation of pain in the ubiquitous laboratory rodent is especially challenging. Several studies suggest that clinical parameters such as change in body weight and daily oral fluid intake correlate with postoperative pain in rodents [1][2][3][4] . Although such parameters provide appropriate indications of rodent well-being during routine clinical care and maintenance, these objective measurements fail to account for typical factors operant during the postoperative period, such as the effect of narcotic analgesic medications on volition and the physiologic stress response to surgery. Recently, Flecknell and colleagues pioneered a method of postoperative behavioral monitoring in rats as an objective means to determine pain and analgesic efficacy 3,5,6 . With this scoring method, trained personnel observe rats for 5 -10 min relatively soon after surgery and document behavioral indicators of pain. We sought to investigate whether daily assessment of body weights could be an alternative or adjunct to the proposed behavioral scoring paradigm. Body weight can be accurately measured, and the timing of evaluation is flexible. This method is also objective and efficient, particularly for evaluating pain in group-housed rodents. Furthermore, a standardized, simple evaluation