Abstract
THE discussion of the effect of narcotics on the permeability of erythrocytes which appears in some text-books1–3 is based on a report by Jacobs and Parpart4. These authors showed that n-butyl alcohol decreased the permeability of erythrocytes of Certain species to glycerol and increased the permeability to glycerol in the erythrocytes of other species. In all cases reported, butanol increased the permeability to thiourea. Davson suggests in several of his writings (for example, ref. 2) that narcotics decrease the permeability “in certain special cases of erythrocyte permeability…[of]…those substances that apparently show an unusually rapid rate of penetration”. Similar results were reported by Hunter et al.5, and it was suggested that a carrier mechanism, or facilitated diffusion, was involved in these “special cases”.
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References
Davson, H., and Danielli, J. F., The Permeability of Natural Membranes, second ed. (University Press, Cambridge, 1952).
Davson, H., A Textbook of General Physiology, second ed. (Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1959).
Giese, A. C., Cell Physiology, second ed. (W. B. Saunders Company, London, 1962).
Jacobs, M. H., and Parpart, A. K., Biol. Bull., 73, 380 (1937).
Hunter, F. R., George, J., and Ospina, B., J. Cell. Comp. Physiol., 65, 299 (1965).
Jacobs, M. H., Glassman, H. N., and Parpart, A. K., J. Cell. Comp. Physiol., 11, 479 (1938).
Hunter, F. R., J. Cell. Comp. Physiol., 55, 175 (1960).
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OSPINA, B., HUNTER, F. Facilitated Diffusion in Mouse and Rat Erythrocytes. Nature 211, 851 (1966). https://doi.org/10.1038/211851a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/211851a0
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