Effect of cupping on morphine withdrawal symptoms in rat

Nowadays, sedative drugs are the main therapeutic measures to attenuate the opioid withdrawal symptoms. These drugs have side effects, mainly dependency. However, physical therapies are found to be safe and without any serious adverse effects. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of cupping, a kind of physical treatment, on morphine withdrawal symptoms in the rats. In this study male Wistar rats weighting 225-275gr were used. The animals were randomly assigned to 8 groups (n=10) and treated with morphine (dependent groups) or saline (nondependent groups). The dependent groups received the additive doses of the morphine twice a day for nine days in order to induce dependency. Afterward, cupping was conducted on the GV14 acupuncture point either one time before withdrawal induction or daily in addition to administration of morphine or saline. In the control groups, the cup was just placed on the point without any vacuum induction. On the ninth day, 30 minutes after administration of saline or morphine, all groups received naloxone injection and the withdrawal symptoms including jumping, rearing, body grooming, abdominal writhing, and wet-dog shaking were recorded for 60 minutes. The results revealed that a single cupping before the withdrawal induction significantly attenuated the withdrawal symptoms (p<0.01) compared to the control group. However, daily cupping failed to decrease the withdrawal symptoms in the dependent rats. The results also indicated that daily cupping in the non- dependent rats increased the naloxone-induced withdrawal symptoms significantly (p<0.01) in comparison to the saline control group. We found that one time cupping before withdrawal induction decreased the withdrawal symptoms which might be the result of the effect of the cupping on releasing the endogenous opioids and gabaergic pathway.