Potentiation of stress-induced analgesia (SIA) by thiorphan and its block by naloxone.

Exposure of rats to inescapable footshock produces an analgesic effect. To determine if endogenously released enkephalins play a role in this phenomenom, rats were treated with the enkephalinase inhibitor thiorphan (T), exposed to inescapable stress, and tested in the tail-flick test for antinociception. T (10-100 mg/kg sc) caused a dose-related potentiation of both the peak effect and the duration of the SIA. This effect was blocked by doses of naloxone (1 mg/kg sc) that did not affect baseline response latencies.