Skip to main content
  • Poster presentation
  • Open access
  • Published:

Effects of female sex hormones on morphine dependence

Background

Sex hormones have a variety of neurobehavioral effects including modulatory roles in anxiety and memory. It also has been shown that female sex hormones can alter some of the modulatory effects of opioids, such as morphine on seizure susceptibility. Thus, we conducted this study to evaluate the effects of female sex hormones on morphine dependency using a behavioral model of morphine withdrawal.

Materials and methods

Female swiss mice (weighing 25-30 g) were divided into 3 main groups: unoperated, sham-operated and operated (OVX). Morphine dependence was induced in mice by repeated injection of increasing morphine doses for 5 days. Then animals were assessed for dependency using the behavioral model of naloxane-induced withdrawal (jumping behavior and diarrhea). Also, the effects of ovarian hormones (estradiol and progesterone) on dependency to morphine were assessed in OVX mice.

Results

Ovarectomized mice had significant decrease in jumping (p<0.01) and significant increase in weight loss (p<0.001) compared with appropriate control groups. Pretreatment with physiologic doses of estrogen and progesterone significantly increased jumping response and decreased weight loss (p<0.001) compared to non-hormone receiving operated mice.

Conclusions

Our results demonstrated that female sex hormones are possibly involved in morphine dependence. More studies are needed to find the underlying mechanism(s) of this effect.

References

  1. Mcewen BS, Alves SE: Estrogen actions in the central nervous system. Endocrine Reviews. 1999, 20: 279-307. 10.1210/er.20.3.279.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Riazi K, Honar H, Homayoun H, Rashidi N, Dehghani M, Sadeghipour H, Gaskari SA, Dehpour AR: Sex and estrus cycle differences in the modulatory effects of morphine on seizure susceptibility in mice. Epilepsia. 2004, 49: 1035-1042. 10.1111/j.0013-9580.2004.69903.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Craft RM, Clark JL, Hart SP, Pinckney MK: Sex differences in locomotor effects of morphine in the rat. Pharmacol Biochem behav. 2006, 85: 850-858. 10.1016/j.pbb.2006.11.022.

    Article  PubMed Central  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Nomikos G, Spyraki C, Kazandjan A, Sfikakis A: Estrogen treatment to ovarectomized rats modifies morphine-induced behavior. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 1987, 27: 611-617. 10.1016/0091-3057(87)90182-1.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank Drs S. Ejtemaei-Mehr and V. Hoghooghi and M. Ghasemi for their helpful criticisms on this manuscript

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Sianati, S., Sharif, B., Sadeghi, M. et al. Effects of female sex hormones on morphine dependence. Ann Gen Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 1), S264 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S264

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S264

Keywords