According to our previous studies, the boiled extract of rosa damascena cause delayed emptying of the stomach. The current research was aimed to verify whether acetylcholine is involved in this effect. Norwegicus rats (n=20) were fasted for 20h and randomly divided into 4 groups. The first group received placebo and was considered as the control. The second group was the same but received atropine (100μg/kg). The third group received rosa damascena (twice with 18h interval), and the fourth group received both rosa damascena and atropine. All rats were gavaged with phenol red and methyl cellulose (1.5ml) and were sacrificed 2h later. In order to assess the rate of stomach emptying, the amount of phenol red in the stomach was measured using a spectrophotometer. The results were analyzed using two-way ANOVA followed by Bonferroni post-test. The amounts of phenol red were 1.36±0.20 and 3.31±0.37 ng in the first (control) and the second (atropine) groups respectively. The third (rosa damascena) and the fourth (rosa damascena + atropine) groups had 7.98±1.83 and 10.29±1.81 ng phenol red in their stomachs, respectively. While the effect of rosa damascena was highly significant (p<0.01), the effect of atropine on emptying rate of the stomach was not significant. These results suggest that acetylcholine may not be accounted for the delayed emptying of the stomach due to rosa damascena, and that other mechanisms may be involved.

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