Anesthesiology
The highest-rated articles from:
Anesthesiology
2015
-
Comment Letter
Questions Regarding the Diagnosis of Malignant Hyperthermia.
-
Editorial Comment
Opioid Half-lives and Hemlines: The Long and Short of Fashion.
-
The thalamus is thought to be crucially involved in the anesthetic state. Here, we investigated the effect of the inhaled anesthetic xenon on stimulus-evoked thalamocortical network activity and on excitability of thalamocortical neurons. Because hyperpolarization-activated, cyclic nucleotide-gated cation (HCN) channels are key regulators of neuronal excitability in the thalamus, the effect of xenon on HCN channels was examined. ⋯ Here, we clearly showed that xenon impairs HCN2 channel function, and this impairment is dependent on intracellular cyclic adenosine monophosphate levels. We provide evidence that this effect reduces thalamocortical signal propagation and probably contributes to the hypnotic properties of xenon.