EXPRESS: Functional bias of morphine and oliceridine under conditions of minor injury.

Abstract

Recent reports suggest pain from surgical injury may influence the risks associated with exposure to opioids. In mice, hind-paw incision attenuates morphine-primed reinstatement due to kappa opioid receptor activation by dynorphin. In this focused group of studies, we examined the hypotheses that kappa-opioid receptor activation in the nucleus accumbens mediates attenuated drug- primed reinstatement after incisional surgery, and the G-protein biased mu-opioid agonist, oliceridine, leads to less priming of the dynorphin effect in comparison to morphine. To address these hypotheses, adult C57BL/6 male mice underwent intracranial cannulation for administration of the selective kappa-opioid antagonist norBNI directly into the nucleus accumbens. After recovery, they were conditioned with morphine or oliceridine after hind-paw incisional injury, then underwent extinction followed by opioid-primed reinstatement. Intra-accumbal administration of norBNI was carried out prior to testing. The nucleus accumbens and medial prefrontal cortex were extracted and analyzed for expression of prodynorphin. We observed that animals conditioned with morphine in the setting of incisional injury demonstrated blunted responses to opioid-primed reinstatement, and that the blunted responses were reversed with intra-accumbal norBNI administration. Persistently elevated levels of prodynorphin expression in the medial prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens were observed in the incised morphine-treated animals. However, both behavioral and molecular changes were absent in animals with incisional injury conditioned with oliceridine. These findings suggest a role for prodynorphin expression in the nucleus accumbens with exposure to morphine after surgery that may protect individuals from relapse not shared with biased mu- opioid receptor agonists.