Lack of importance of caffeine as an analgesic adjuvant of dipyrone in mice.
The analgesic effect of caffeine used alone and in combination with dipyrone and butalbital was evaluated after oral administration in mice, using two different pain tests: the hot plate test and the phenylbenzoquinone-induced writhing test. Neither caffeine (5 to 200 mg/kg) nor butalbital (10 and 20 mg/kg) (20 mg/kg was the highest dose that did not induce sleep) produced a significant antinociceptive effect, whereas dipyrone was active from 400 mg/kg in the hot plate test and from 50 mg/kg in the writhing test. The scores obtained with the combinations were not different from those of the dipyrone-treated group, except for the butalbital-dipyrone combination. Thus caffeine is not an analgesic adjuvant in mice; its presence in the combination studied appears to be justifiable only insofar as it inhibited the sedative effect of butalbital.