Pilot Study: Postoperative Pain Reduction by Pre Emptive N-Acetylcysteine
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2018-10-29
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Despite current available analgesic drugs, post-surgical pain management remains challenging.
A potential new target for analgesic drugs are group-II metabotropic glutamate receptors
subtypes (mGlu2 and mGlu3 receptors), since growing evidence from animal models show that
activation of these receptors produce s analgesic effects in inflammatory and in neuropathic
pain states. . N-Acetylcysteine (NAC) is a safe agent and with little to no side effects. NAC
can induce analgesia by activating the glutamate:cystein antiporter, causing endogenous
activation of the mGlu 2/3 receptors. However, this has only been investigated once in the
peri-operative setting, were it showed preliminary promising result of reduction in opiate
necessity. In healthy subjects there was a significant reduction in pain ratings to laser
stimuli and amplitudes of laser evoked potentials after NAC. Based on these promising
results, we hypothesize that pre emptive intravenous NAC can reduce postoperative pain and
thereby cause less necessity for escape analgesics like opiates.