[On dose-response curves and the receptor interaction of nondepolarizing neuromuscular blocking drugs (author's transl)].
Schuh. F T FT
Key Findings
- Dose‑response curves for the studied neuromuscular blockers show parallel shifts with similar slopes on a semilog plot.
- A linear dose‑effect plot reveals a threshold phenomenon (s = 60‑80) indicating a minimum effective dose.
- Double‑reciprocal plots are non‑linear, suggesting receptor occupancy and effect are not directly proportional, challenging classical occupation theory.
Practical Outcomes
- The results are relevant only to clinical anesthesia and have no direct implications for self‑directed health optimization, dosing of semax, or longevity protocols. Biohackers can safely disregard this study for their own experiments.
Summary
This paper examined how several muscle‑relaxing drugs used in surgery affect nerve‑muscle signaling and found that their dose‑response relationships don’t follow simple, classic models. The findings are specific to anesthetic practice and don’t provide actionable information for people using semax or other biohacking compounds.
Abstract
1. Dose-response curves of alcuronium, fazadinium, gallamine, metocurine (dimethltubocurarine), pancuronium, and tubocurarine were obtained from 362 surgical patients during general anaesthesia (barbiturate, fentanyl, droperidol, N2O; normoventilation) by means of mechanomyograms of the hand muscles after supramaximal electrical stimulation (100-125 V, 0.2 ms, 0.2 Hz) of the ulnar nerve. - 2. In a conventional semilogarithmic plot of effect E/Emax versus dose D the sigmoid-shaped curves exhibit a parallel shift with almost the same slopes. - 3. A linear plot of E/Emax against D yields curves intersecting by extrapolation with the ordinate at a point s below zero which indicates a threshold phenomenon in the dose-response relation and gives the value for this threshold (s=60-80). - 4. A double-reciprocal plot of 1/(E/Emax) versus 1/D does not result in straight lines, indicating a lack of linear proportionality between receptor occupancy and effect. The curves are straightened plotting 1/[(E+S)/(Emax+S)] versus 1/D. - 5. From our results which are supported by the "margin of safety" concept of neuromuscular transmission, it is supposed that the relation between neuromuscular blocking drugs and nicotinic receptors does not follow the classical occupation theory based on the law of mass action.
Study Information
pubmed
1981