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 in, role, health and/or disease:
“If women’s role in life is limited solely to housewife/mother, it clearly ends when she can no longer bear more children and the children she has borne leave home.”
—Betty Friedan (20th century)
“Scholars who become politicians are usually assigned the comic role of having to be the good conscience of state policy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or a major movie star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word “collectible” as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.”
—Fran Lebowitz (20th century)