In article <4ohole$65 at cisun2000.unil.ch>,
epralong at ulys.unil.ch (Etienne Pralong) wrote:
The pharmacological basis? This debate has been going on for decades! It
smacks of a semester paper ...
In a nutshell, original proposals dealt the strong correlation between lipid
solubility and anaesthetic potency. The hypothesis then moved on to dealing
with order/disorder of the neuronal lipid membranes. I think nowdays many
people would ague that general aneasthetics probably act via specific
interactions with ion channels. Both excitatory and inhibitory channels are
involved. As a fence sitter, you could probably say that as well as specific
interactions with ion channels, there may be direct effects on lipids.
cheers, Alex.