Henbane, Hyoscyamus niger, is a hallucinogenic plant, widely spread and easy accessible, which contains anticholinergic substances. Ingestion, intentional or accidental, can provoke serious worsening of psychophysical state and can cause even death. Intoxication resembles the one with atropine. Symptoms like mydriasis, tachycardia, arrhythmia, agitation, convulsion and coma can appear. Diagnosi...

McCubbin, T. D., Brown, J. H., Dewar, K. M. S., Jones, C. J., and Spence, A. A. (1979). Glycopyrrolate as a premedicant: comparison with atropine. Br. J. Anaesth., 51, 885. Rupreht, J. (1980). Physostigmine rcversaj of diazepam. Anesthesiology, (in press). Dworacek, B. (1976). Central anticholinergic syndrome in anaesthetic practice. Acta Anaesthesiol. Belg., 27, 45. Selenati, A. (1979). Recett...

Study selection Studies were selected if they were unconfounded, double blind, randomised controlled trials that compared selegiline with placebo in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Studies had to have been reported before the end of 1998; patients had to meet NINCDSADRDA or DSM criteria for Alzheimer’s disease; and any secondary treatments (eg, physostigmine and lecithin) had to be given to ...

Ethylcholine aziridinium ion (AF64A), a putative cholinotoxin, was administered into the cerebroventricles of rats, and the effects on learning behaviors were observed. AF64A caused the impairment of learning acquisition in both passive and active avoidance responses. Physostigmine, a cholinesterase inhibitor, antagonized these changes at the doses of 0.03 to 0.1 mg/kg. Our behavioral study may...

An auditory discrimination paradigm was employed to elicit event-related brain potentials in 13 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 14 patients with multi-infarct dementia. The P300 latency was significantly prolonged in 12 patients with dementia compared with age-matched controls and showed a significant negative correlation with the score of Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), especia...

Tardive dyskinesia, like several other choreiform disorders, is felt to be primarily related to dopaminergic activity within the striatum. Physostigmine has been demonstrated to improve the abnormal movements in patients with tardive dyskinesia while scopolamine tends to aggravate abnormal movements and in some cases elicits abnormal movement not previously observed. This evidence supports the ...

1. 5,5'-Dithiobis-(2-nitrobenzoate) did not influence serum cholinesterase activity, whereas 2,2'-dithiodipyridine had an inhibitory effect. 2. The lowering of the molar extinction coefficients observed in the presence of physostigmine may be a result of a reaction between thiolate ions with carbamate moieties. 3. The use of 5,5'-dithiobis-(2-nitrobenzoate) is still recommended in investigation...