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Abstract

Background and Purpose: It showed that antidepressants may reduce the abuse potential of opioid. In other hand, studies showed avena sativa has antidepressant and sedative properties. So the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of ethanolic extract of Avena sativa on morphine withdrawal signs in male mice.
Material and Methods: In this experimental study forty male NMRI mice (20-30 g) were randomly divided into 5 groups of 8: control groups received morphine and normal saline (10ml/kg) and other groups received ethanol (3%) and different doses of ethanolic extract of Avena sativa (50,100 and 200mg/kg).Morphine dependency was induced using a four- day schedule method with 50, 50, 75 and 50 mg/kg dosing respectively. In fourth day 2 hours after single dose of morphine, naloxone was injected (5 mg /kg) and withdrawal signs were recorded with number of jumping and diarrhea, grooming, wet dog shake, teeth chattering, writing, climbing as scores of 0 to 3 during 30min.The data were expressed with one-way ANOVA for quantities and Mann-Whitney U test for qualities data’s and they were analyzed with SPSS 15 and P values less than 0.05 were considered significant.
Results: The present study findings showed that all doses of ethanolic extract of Avena sativa compared to control group, significantly and dose- dependently decrease the number of jumping in morphine dependent mice (56.12±6.46, 40.0±5.33 and 31.5±2.5 respectively)) P

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