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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Pharmacol.

Sec. Gastrointestinal and Hepatic Pharmacology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1617936

Effects of different opioids on the contractile tension of isolated rat intestinal smooth muscle

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Obstetrics & Gynecology Hospital, Fudan University,, Shanghai, China
  • 2The Fifth People's Hospital of Shanghai, shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

ABSTRACT BACKGROUD:To compare how five common opioids affect rat intestinal muscle tension and frequency across concentrations, establishing an animal model to provide translational evidence for selecting opioids with the least gastrointestinal impact. METHODS: Isolated rat small intestine specimens were prepared, and 6 intestinal segments were selected from the same rat and placed into remifentanil, sufentanil, oxycodone, nalbuphine, butorphanol, and the control group with balanced solution. Experiments were carried out to observe and compare the changes in the contraction tension and contraction frequency of small intestinal smooth muscle during the change in concentration gradients of 10 -9, 10 -8, 10 -7, 10 -6, 10 -5, and 10 -4 M. Statistical analysis obtained from 10 rats in the in vitro intestinal tube experiment was performed. RESULTS: The results revealed that when the concentration increased to 10-7 M, the intestinal contraction tension in the butorphanol group began to decrease significantly, and the intestinal contraction tension in the nalbuphine and oxycodone groups began to decrease significantly at concentrations of 10-6 M. while the sufentanil group and the remifentanil group showed a significant decrease in intestinal contractile tension at 10-5 M and 10-4 M, respectively. When the concentration of the drug increased to 10-4 M, the contraction frequency of the sufentanil group decreased significantly, and there was no statistical difference among concentrations of other drugs. CONCLUSIONS: As the concentration increased, different opioids inhibited the contractile tone of rat intestinal smooth muscle in vitro. The intensity of inhibition was butorphanol>nalbuphine≈oxycodone>sufentanil>remifentanil, and the Contraction frequency was almost unaffected except in the very high concentration sufentanil group.

Keywords: Opioids, contractile tension, Contractile frequency, Intestinal smooth muscle, rat

Received: 03 Jul 2025; Accepted: 13 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Yang, hu, Cheng, Sun and Huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Shen Sun, sunshen1980@126.com
Shaoqiang Huang, drhuangsq@163.com

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