Role in Health and Disease
Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors can be blocked by curare, hexamethonium and toxins present in the venoms of snakes and shellfishes, like α-bungarotoxin. Drugs such as the neuromuscular blocking agents bind reversibly to the nicotinic receptors in the neuromuscular junction and are used routinely in anaesthesia.
Nicotinic receptors are the primary mediator of the effects of nicotine. In myasthenia gravis, the receptor at NMJ is targeted by antibodies, leading to muscle weakness. Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors can be blocked by the drugs atropine and scopolamine.
Read more about this topic: Acetylcholine Receptor
Famous quotes containing the words role, health and/or disease:
“His role was as the gentle teacher, the logical, compassionate, caring and articulate teacher, who inspired you so that you wanted to please him more than life itself.”
—Carol Lawrence, U.S. singer, star of West Side Story. Conversations About Bernstein, p. 172, ed. William Westbrook Burton, Oxford University Press (1995)
“To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And this disease that was Swann’s love had so multiplied, it was so intimately tied to all of Swann’s habits, to all his acts, to his thoughts, to his health, to his sleep, to his life, even to what he desired for his afterlife, his love was so much a part of him that it could not be extracted from him without destroying him entirely: as is said in surgery, his love was inoperable.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)