Effects of the local anesthetic benzocaine on the human erythrocyte membrane and molecular models

A vibrational spectroscopic investigation on benzocaine molecule

“…Our calculation results given in Table 3 have clearly demonstrated that a good number of the fundamental bands of benzocaine have been wrongly assigned by either Alcolea Palafox [21][22][23][24] or Longarte et al [26] or both. In the light of these results, we propose reassignments for the fundamentals due to the normal modes with number 4,6,7,9,10,11,15,33,36,46,47,54,59,60, which are marked with a star character (*) in Table 4. To continue the discussion only on the conformation sensitive normal modes of the molecule will be much more preferable for both keeping the paper size shorter and determining the individual contributions of the trans and gauche conformers to the experimental vibrational spectra of benzocaine molecule.…”

“…Today, one can easily reach many papers published on its anesthetic effects [1][2][3][4]. Besides, it is also possible to found papers published on the other important pharmacological effects of this substance; (1) its agonist and blocking effects [5], (2) its effects on a cardiac K+ channel cloned from human ventricle [6] and on the human erythrocyte membrane [7], (3) as a UV filter, its estrogenic activity in vivo and in vitro [8] as well as its important roles as a hydrophilic block in the synthesized polymeric structures which exhibit physicochemical properties in vivo studies [9,10] are only few of them. Nowadays, synthesizing of the Schiff base ligands and their metal complexes which can show antibacterial, anticancer and herbicidal activities has become an area attracting great interest [11][12][13]; in this aspect, benzocaine has been reported as one of the preferable substances used in synthesizing of these type of structures.…”

NMR investigations of interactions between anesthetics and lipid bilayers

“…Many studies have been performed to examine the effects anesthetics impose on lipid membranes. Observed changes in bilayer properties such as fluidity, main transition temperature, area per lipid and lipid volume have been reported in several studies [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. These investigations, however were not able to provide a plausible explanation for the anesthetic mechanism because changes of the bilayer structure or dynamics when introducing anesthetics are quite small, compared to changes caused by variations in temperature by one or two degrees [16].…”

“…Due to the mentioned shortcomings of lipid related explanations of the anesthetic action, protein oriented theories, where the anesthetic action is explained by the binding to specific protein sites, have grown in popularity during the last decades [15,17,18]. Several investigations have been carried out [13,14] in order to study whether the primary mechanism of action of local anesthetics is a result of changes in the lipid bilayer or due to the binding to proteins. Although still not fully understood, the molecular mechanism of anesthesia is presently considered to be a result of the Na + voltage-gate ion channel being blocked by the anesthetic molecule, thus blocking nerve impulses [19].…”

A study of the perturbation effects of the local anesthetic procaine on human erythrocyte and model membranes and of modifications of the sodium transport in toad skin

“…The procedure used in the current study of procaine effects on the toad skin consisted in the measurement of the electric parameters transepithelial potential difference (PD) and short-circuit current (Isc), which is the amount of current necessary to bring the PD across the skin down to zero, and measures the net transepithelial Na + transport across the epithelium [14]. All these systems have been used to determine the interaction with, and perturbing effects on, membranes by the LA dibucaine [15], proparacaine [16], bupivacaine [17] and benzocaine [18].…”