Changes in pain threshold during the reproductive cycle of the female rat

Responsiveness to pain was determined in female rats across the whole reproductive cycle using the tail-flick test. When tested immediately after mating, pain thresholds were unaltered, whereas 10 min later animals typically demonstrated hyperalgesia (Experiment 1). They also demonstrated hyperalgesia during most of pregnancy, and had significantly lower pain thresholds than the unmated controls except for the 24 h before parturition, when a sudden increase in tail-flick latencies was recorded (Experiment 2). Pain thresholds were also significantly lower throughout the nursing period but increased significantly when dams were separated from their litters for 6 h, and returned to premating baseline values within 24 h of weaning (Experiment 3). These findings confirm and extend earlier reports that female reproductive state may significantly modify responsiveness to noxious stimuli, and it is suggested that differences between the results of this and previous studies may be at least partly explained by the relatively stress-free test procedure adopted here.