Abstract
THE action of depolarising drugs on the endplate of skeletal muscle is difficult to interpret because the depolarisation is often transient and followed by spontaneous recovery during the continued presence of the drug, and because of differences between species. In frog muscle, depolarising drugs produce an initial increase in conductance at the endplate, followed by a decline in the conductance as ‘desensitisation’ develops1–3. In cat muscle, depolarisation is maintained while the drug is applied4. Rat muscle has long been considered anomalous in that the depolarisation is transient and limited5. We now report an unexpected finding for rat diaphragm, in which the recovery is attributed to the action of an electrogenic sodium pump6, stimulated by the entry of sodium.
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CREESE, R., FRANKLIN, G. & MITCHELL, L. Two mechanisms for spontaneous recovery from depolarising drugs in rat muscle. Nature 261, 416–417 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1038/261416a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/261416a0
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