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Papers of the Week


Papers: 6 Aug 2022 - 12 Aug 2022


Animal Studies


2022 Aug 08


Behav Brain Res

N-Ethylnorketamine has anesthetic and analgesic effects with abuse liability.

Authors

Li F, Qiao Y, Chen Y, Li N, Yang M, Li X, Qiu Y, Cui W, Shen H, Xu P, Di B
Behav Brain Res. 2022 Aug 08:114052.
PMID: 35952778.

Abstract

Arylcyclohexylamines is an ever-growing class of new psychoactive substances, including an increasing number of ketamine analogues. N-Ethylnorketamine (NENK) is a new synthetic ketamine analogue that has emerged as an abused drug, but little is known about the pharmacological profile of NENK. In this study, we investigated the anesthetic and analgesic activity, abuse liability of NENK compared with ketamine. The ED values of anesthetic activity for NENK and ketamine were 96.9, 69.4mg/kg, respectively. The ED values of analgesic activity for NENK and ketamine were 45.9 and 23.6mg/kg, respectively. NENK induced significant conditioned place preference at a minimum dose of 10.0mg/kg in mice, an effect comparable to that of ketamine (3.0mg/kg). Acute injections of NENK or ketamine at 30.0mg/kg enhanced locomotor activity, and repeated treatments with this dose induced locomotor sensitization after withdrawal. Taken together, these results clearly demonstrated that NENK has lower anesthetic and analgesic activity compared to ketamine, but has significant abuse liability.