Analgesic and ulcerogenic effect of Methanolic extract of Melilotus Officinalis

In traditional medicine, Some plants are used as analgesic. The aim of this investigation was to evaluate the analgesic effect of "Melilotus Officinalis", which is used traditionally to relieve rheumatic pain, migrain and as anti-inflammatory a gent. For this purpose different doses of the suxheleted and percolated extract of melilotus officinalis, were injected intraperitonealy to mice and the analgesic effect was determined by tail flick and formalin tests. The results showed that, suxheleted methanolic extract with doses of 50, 100, 200 and 300 mg/kg induced significant analgesia effect in comparison with the control group (P<0.01). The maximum analgesic effect was observed in 200 mg/kg which reached to its peak at 120 min after injection (P<0.01). Analgesic effect of suxheleted extract was higher than percolated one. Pretreatment of animals with naloxane did not change the analgesic effect of the extract, therefore the involvment of opioid receptors was excluded in this respect. The ulcerogenicity test showed that the ulcerogenic effects of the extract was lower than that of the same dose of indomethacine. Overall the results indicated that the extract of the plant had analgesic effect.