Four applications of the anesthetic cut-off effect

This article presents and analyses several cases in which the use of the cut-off effect is useful. It starts from the fact that an anesthetic effect of homologous agents is always expressible as a function of their chain lengths and that the cut-off point is a point at which the function vanishes. We then investigate four categories of results: (i) whole body effects. (ii) Cases in which the anesthetics affect the Hodgkin-Huxley parameters of a nerve. (iii) Molecular mechanisms of anesthetic action. (iv) The physical chemistry of the anesthetic process. Our discussion shows that it is possible to incorporate these apparently remote results into one framework. It also shows how to compare results that were gathered by independent measuring methods. In some instances we suggest an interpretation, in others we suggest a further gathering of experimental data. One of the deductions indicates that a weakness exists in the lipid theories of anesthesia. (C) 2000 Society for Mathematical Biology.