Metamizol (also known as
dipyrone or
sulpyrine) is one of the
non-opioid analgesics commonly used in clinical practice in the treatment of somatic and
visceral pain. Here, our results give evidence that repeated twice daily intraperitoneal
metamizol administration during 7 days diminished development of
neuropathic pain symptoms in a mouse model of
neuropathic pain. We observed that
metamizol inhibited the activation of spinal microglia in neuropathic mice. Moreover, our findings provide evidence that pronociceptive (IL-1β, XCL1, and CCL2), but not antinociceptive (IL-1α, IL-1RA, and IL-18BP), factors play an important role in
metamizol-induced antinociception. We observed that
metamizol influences the spinal levels of the
nociceptin receptor (NOP) but does not alter the expression of other members of the
opioid receptor family (mu (MOP), delta (DOP) and kappa (KOP)), or other important nociception receptors (transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) and transient receptor potential
ankyrin 1 (TRPA1)).
Metamizol administration did not affect the levels of the
opioid prohormones (
proopiomelanocortin (
POMC),
proenkephalin (PENK),
prodynorphin (PDYN), and
pronociceptin (PNOC)). However, we observed an enhanced antinociceptive effect of
oxycodone, but not
buprenorphine, after
metamizol treatment. In conclusion, we found that
metamizol-induced
analgesia in neuropathy is associated with silencing microglia activation and, consequently, with a reduction in pronociceptive
cytokines. These results provide evidence that
metamizol may join the modest arsenal of effective remedies for
neuropathic pain and may constitute part of a multimodal
pain therapy.