analgesic effect of clove essential oil in mice

objective: results obtained from literature reviews and human studies have shown the analgesic effects of clove plant in toothache. the present work was undertaken in order to investigate the possible analgesic effect of clove oil in mice. materials and methods: fifty mice were divided into 5 groups: 1) saline; 2) essential oil (ess) 2%, 3) ess 5%, 4) ess10% and 5) ess 20%. the hot plate test (55±0.2 °c; cut-off 60 sec) was performed as a base record 15 min before injection of drugs (saline or 2, 5, 10 and 20% concentrations of essential oil) and consequently repeated every 15 minutes after injection.  results: repeated measures anova test showed that maximal percent effect (mpe) in animal groups treated by 5, 10 and 20% essential oil was significantly higher than saline group. comparison between 4 treated groups showed that mpe in 10% essential group was higher than 2 and 5% groups however; there was no significant difference between 10% and 20% groups. conclusion: the result of present study showed that clove essential oil has analgesic effect inmice using hot plate test. more investigations are needed to elucidate the exact mechanism (s).