Publication Date:
1978-05-19
Description:
Barbiturate anesthetics, but not anticonvulsants, abolish the spontaneous activity of cultured spinal cord neurons; directly increase membrane conductance, an effect which is suppressed by the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) antagonists picrotoxin and penicillin; and are more potent than anticonvulsants in augmenting GABA and depressing glutamate responses. Barbiturate anticonvulsants abolish picrotoxin-induced convulsive activity. These results indicate qualitative and quantitative differences between anesthetic and anticonvulsant barbiturates, which may explain their different clinical effects.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Macdonald, R L -- Barker, J L -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1978 May 19;200(4343):775-7.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/205953" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Action Potentials/drug effects
;
Cells, Cultured
;
Electric Conductivity
;
Glutamates/pharmacology
;
Membrane Potentials/drug effects
;
Neurons/*drug effects
;
Pentobarbital/*pharmacology
;
Phenobarbital/*pharmacology
;
Picrotoxin/pharmacology
;
Receptors, Neurotransmitter/drug effects
;
gamma-Aminobutyric Acid/pharmacology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
