Many drugs affect neuromuscular transmission. Every patient, but especially as a doctor treating a patient with myasthenia should be aware of potentially dangerous drugs that may exacerbate myasthenia! Many therapeutic medications, there are alternatives. A brief overview of risk drugs for download here.
Neurotoxins
There is a relatively large number of neurotoxins of biological origin, but also produced by chemical means, which block neuromuscular transmission. The most famous is the botulinum toxin. You can view an image bacterium Clostridium botulinum and the mechanism of action of botulinum toxin, which is now often used as a therapeutic agent. You can see a snake, which produces alpha - bungarotoxin This is a snake venom is extremely important because of its isolation to study acetylcholine receptor and even with his help to establish the level of antibodies against AChR in serum of patients.
There are a number of other toxins, produced representatives of animal kingdom.
Representative of poisons, blocking the neuromuscular transmission of the plants is curare, used by American Indians. Our civilization, however, produced, and chemical toxins (organophosphates, pesticides, nerve gases and other) operating in the neuromuscular discs.
More links to sites dedicated to this issue:
http://neuromuscular.wustl.edu/nother/bot.htm
http://www.anaesthetist.com/anaes/patient/ans/ach.htm
Articles:
Snake Venoms and the Neuromuscular Junction, R L Lewis, L Gutmann, Semin Neurol, 2004
Many drugs affect neuromuscular transmission. Every patient, but especially as a doctor treating a patient with myasthenia should be aware of potentially dangerous drugs that may exacerbate myasthenia! Many therapeutic medications, there are alternatives. A brief overview of risk drugs for download here.