Publication Date:
1980-01-11
Description:
Stereoisomers of the barbiturate anesthetic pentobarbital were applied to mouse spinal neurons growing in tissue culture. Intracellular recordings of neuronal membrane properties revealed that the (+) and (-) isomers caused direct changes in membrane potential and conductance on some but not all of the cells tested. The action of the (+) isomer was predominantly excitatory, whereas the (-) isomer produced predominantly inhibitory responses. The (-) isomer was considerably more effective in potentiating inhibitory responses to the transmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid. The results show that pentobarbital has multiple effects on neuronal excitability and demonstrate the presence of stereospecific sites of barbiturate action on central neurons.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Huang, L Y -- Barker, J L -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1980 Jan 11;207(4427):195-7.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7350656" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Action Potentials/drug effects
;
Animals
;
Cells, Cultured
;
Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
;
Electric Conductivity
;
Membrane Potentials/drug effects
;
Mice
;
Neural Inhibition/drug effects
;
Neurons/*drug effects
;
Pentobarbital/*pharmacology
;
Spinal Cord/embryology
;
Stereoisomerism
;
Structure-Activity Relationship
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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