Mice were administered anticholinesterase pesticides dichlorvos (DDVP) or methomyl (MET). Both DDVP and MET induced dose-dependent seizures and lethality in mice. The muscarinic antagonist atropine (ATR, 1.8 mg/kg) did not prevent seizures but diminished the lethality induced by DDVP or MET. The nicotinic antagonist mecamylamine (MEC, 1 mg/kg) affected neither DDVP-induced seizures nor DDVP- an...

1 4-Aminopyridine methiodide (4-APMI), a quaternary analogue of aminopyridine (4-AP), was tested for neuromuscular facilitatory actions on the chick biventer cervicis and frog sartorius nerve-muscle preparations. 2 In the chick, 4-APMI (10(-4) to 10(-2) M) augmented indirectly elicited twitches and reversed tubocurarine-induced neuromuscular block. Reversal of tubocurarine block was observed af...

The analgesic efficacy of cholinergic agonists and anticholinesterase agents has been widely recognized. The analgesic effect obtained by activating cholinergic mechanisms, however, seems to depend on the experimental pain model utilized for its evaluation. The antinociceptive effect of intraspinal neostigmine was examined in rats submitted concurrently to the tail flick and formalin tests. Neo...

The interest in octamethylpyrophosphoramide (schradan) as a systemic insecticide (l-3) and in the treatment of myasthenia gravis (4) emphasizes the need for a better understanding of its mode of toxic action. Exposure of mammals to schradan leads to death, with the typical symptoms of acetylcholine poisoning after a definite lag period (5, 6). Yet schradan is only about one-millionth as effecti...

BACKGROUND Anticholinesterase therapies offer modest benefit to subgroups of AD sufferers. However, there has previously been no way of predicting which patients will respond to any of the drugs. OBJECTIVE To discover if gender and/or apolipoprotein E genotype can be used as predictors of response in the clinical setting. DESIGN 107 patients from the Bristol Memory Disorders Clinic took par...

In this work we optimized the cooking and extraction conditions for obtaining high yields of total polyphenols from potato and studied the effect of three domestic methods of cooking on total phenols, antioxidant activity, and anticholinesterase activities. The optimization of the experiment was carried out by the experimental designs. The extraction of the polyphenols was carried out by macera...

Diisopropyl phosphorofluoridate (DFP), an insecticide, is a potent anticholinesterase that binds essentially irreversibly to acetylcholinesterase, resulting in severe, acute neurologic pathology, and less severe, but longer-lasting, delayed neuropathy. We report here on the short-term effects of bath-applied DFP on extracellularly recorded responses from CA3 and CA1 of rat hippocampus. Exposure...

Long-term administration of 9-amino-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroacridine (THA) has been reported to produce marked clinical improvement in patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The dramatic enhancement of cognitive function seen with THA contrasts sharply with the modest improvements seen with other forms of anticholinesterase therapy, suggesting that additional mechanisms might play a role in its...

We compared biological functions of two acetylcholinesterase genes (TcAce1 and TcAce2) in Tribolium castaneum, a globally distributed major pest of stored grain products and an emerging model organism, by using RNA interference. Although both genes expressed at all developmental stages and mainly in the brain, the transcript level of TcAce1 was 1.2- to 8.7-fold higher than that of TcAce2, depen...