BACKGROUND Barbiturates, particularly phenobarbital, have been shown to be a tumour promoter in animal experiments and were found to be associated with increased risk of lung cancer in our cohort follow-up study to screen pharmaceuticals for possible carcinogenic effects. Sixteen more years of follow-up have accumulated permitting a more detailed evaluation of this association. METHODS In all...

BARBITURIC acid was first synthesized by Conrad and Guthzeit in 1882, and in 1903 the 5:5-diethyl derivative was introduced into medicine as a hypnotic by Carl Fischer and von Mering, under the name of Veronal. In the past, barbituric acid was usually regarded as the cyclic ureide of malonic acid, i.e. as malonyl urea, and its structural formula written in a form which emphasized this relations...

The interaction of pentobarbitone sodium with three analeptics viz. micoren, pentylenetetrazol and methedrine was studied in mice. Micoren prolonged pentobarbitone sleeping time. pentylenetetrazol shortened the sleeping time. Methedrine also shortened the sleeping time, but clonic convulsions of mild to severe intensity were noticed 45-60 minutes after the drug injection.

In this study the relationship between choosing appropriate descriptors by genetic algorithm to the Polarizability (POL), Molar Refractivity (MR) and Octanol/water Partition Coefficient (LogP) of barbiturates is studied. The chemical structures of the molecules were optimized using ab initio 6-31G basis set method and Polak-Ribiere algorithm with conjugated gradient within HyperChem 8.0 environ...

Hospital admissions due to acute barbiturate poisoning per million population in England and Wales have decreased since 1965 at about the same rate as NHS prescriptions for barbiturates. Admissions due to poisoning with other drugs have increased, but, largely because the benzodiazepine hypnotics and tranquillisers are much less toxic than the barbiturates that they are replacing, deaths from p...

Identification, especially of drugs, plays an important role in pharmaceutical analysis. Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) has been widely applied in this field, but sometimes its resolving power leaves something to be desired. Barbiturates, steroids, sulphonamides and local anaesthetics, for example, represent classes where an abundance of closely similar derivatives are available. Separations a...

THERE IS AN EVER-increasing need for a rapid method of screening for barbiturates in the laboratory. Although the ultraviolet methods (1, ) are the most accurate, they require 0.5 to 2 h of technician time and therefore are hardly ideal for emergency-room use. Some methods have been published which depend on the complexing reaction of barbiturates in an organic solvent with a mercury salt in an...

We examined the effects of secobarbital and other sedative-hypnotic barbiturates on the neuronal death induced by exposure to excitatory amino acids or deprivation of oxygen or glucose in mouse cortical cell cultures. N-Methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA), alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4- isoxazolepropionate, and kainate toxicities were attenuated in a concentration-dependent fashion by high concentrati...