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This page is about the plant. For the DC Comics character, see Curare.
Curare is a substance containing the alkaloid D-tubocurarine. It is obtained from one of several plants, the purified products of which are used as skeletal muscle relaxants. In medicine, curare has been superseded by a number of curare-like agents that have a similar pharmacodynamic profile but with fewer side effects.
Curare is an example of a non-depolarising muscle relaxant which blocks the nicotinic receptors, one of the two types of cholinergic (acetylcholine) receptors on the post synaptic membrane of the neuromuscular junction.
Curare has also been used historically as a paralyzing poison by South American indigenous people. The prey is killed by asphyxiation as the respiratory muscles are unable to contract resulting in apnea.
Curare and anaesthesia
Muscle relaxants are used in modern anaesthesia for many reasons, such as providing optimal operating conditions and facilitating intubation of the trachea. Before muscle relaxants, anaesthesiologists needed to use larger doses of the anaesthetic agent, such as ether or cyclopropane to achieve these aims. Such deep anaesthesia risked killing patients that were elderly or had heart conditions.
The source of curare in the Amazon was first researched by Richard Evans Schultes in 1941. Since the 1930s, it was being used in hospitals as a muscle relaxant. He discovered that different types of curare called for as many as 15 ingredients, and in time helped to identify more than 70 species that produced the drug *.
On January 23, 1942, Dr. Harold Griffith and Dr. Enid Johnson gave a synthetic preparation of curare (Intracostin) to a patient undergoing an appendectomy (to supplement conventional anaesthesia). Modern anaesthetists have at their disposal a variety of muscle relaxants for use as a standard component of anaesthesia.
The ability to produce muscle relaxation independently from anaesthesia has permitted anaesthesiologists to adjust the two effects as needed to ensure that their patients are safely unconscious and sufficiently relaxed to permit surgery. However, it has also made possible anaesthesia awareness, a condition in which, through error or accident, a patient remains fully conscious and sensitive to pain during surgery, but is unable to move and thus unable to alert attending staff to their state of awareness.
Plants from which curare can be extracted
Curare in Latin
"Curo, curare, curavi, curatus" is a first conjugation verb in Latin that means "to take care of" or "look after". The English word "care" comes from it.
References
- Foldes, F.F. "Anesthesia before and after curare", Anasthesieabteilung des Albert-Einstein-College of Medicine. Anaesthesiol Reanim, 1993, 18(5):128-31. (retrieved June 20 2005)
- James, Mel. "Harold Griffith",Heirloom Series, Volume 6. (retrieved June 20 2005)
- "Curare", Blue Planet Biomes, 2000. (retrieved September 27 2005)
Muscle relaxants | Nicotinic antagonists | Pharmacologic agents | Toxicology
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"Curare"