INHIBITION OF ANESTHESIA BY STEROIDS

¹ Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada

Pretreatment with various steroids can protect the rat against the induction of anesthesia by progesterone or pentobarbital. Among those tested, all potent anabolic androgens exhibited antianesthetic activity. However, such hormonal potency does not appear to be indispensable for this protective effect since spironolactone, although devoid of anabolic and androgenic actions, is highly efficacious in antagonizing both anesthetics employed in this work. The antianesthetic effect of the various compounds tested roughly parallels their protective action against digitalis compounds,7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene and other toxic substances. Hence, this inhibition of anesthesia is assumed to represent a special instance of the catatoxic effect which appears to be a property of certain steroids, independent of their classic hormonal actions.