Milk-derived lactoferrin may block tolerance to morphine analgesia

Lactoferrin (LF) is a multifunctional protein that is widely found in milk, blood, and other biological fluids. In the present study, we investigated the possibility that LF may block a tolerance to morphine-induced analgesia in the mouse. The nociceptive effect of bovine milk-derived LF (bLF) was estimated in the mouse tail-flick test. Although an intraperitoneal (100 mg/kg) or an oral (300 mg/kg) administration of bLF did not show remarkable analgesia, a combination with intraperitoneal administration of morphine (3 mg/kg) strikingly enhanced morphine-induced analgesia. Moreover, repeated administration of morphine at doses of 3 mg/kg (ip) or 5 mg/kg (ip) caused a tolerance to the morphine on the 5th or 7th day, respectively. In contrast, the combination of bLF (100 mg/kg, ip) with morphine (3 mg/kg, ip) retarded the development of tolerance to the 9th day, although bLF did not show any effect on the mice that had obtained tolerance to morphine. Furthermore, the potentiative effect of bLF was partially blocked by pre-treatment with NG-nitro-l-arginine methyl ester  (l-NAME), a nonselective nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitor, and completely blocked by   7-nitroindazole (7-NI), a selective neuronal NOS (nNOS) inhibitor. Methylene blue (MB), a guanylate cyclase (GC) inhibitor, also dose-dependently prevented the potentiative effect of bLF. These results suggest that bLF selectively activates nNOS and then accelerates NO production. The increased NO in turn modulates the GC activity and finally enhances the endogenous opioid system via cyclic guanosine monophosphate production. We conclude that bLF may block the development of tolerance to morphine in mice, possibly via the selective activation of nNOS.