Effects of flurazepam on amino acid-evoked responses recorded from the lobster muscle and the frog spinal cord.

The effects of flurazepam hydrochloride on GABA- or glutamate-evoked responses recorded from the lobster muscle fibre and the frog isolated spinal cord were studied using electrophysiological techniques. On lobster muscle flurazepam (up to 100 μM) reversibly antagonized responses to bath-applied or iontophoretically-applied glutamate without any effect on GABA responses. Higher concentrations of flurazepam (>200 μM) sometimes increased the resting membrane conductance, an effect different from that of GABA in being insensitive to picrotoxin (0.5 μM). In the tetrodotoxin (TTX)-treated frog spinal cord flurazepam (5 μM) reversibly antagonized both glutamate- and GABA-evoked dorsal root depolarizations although a smaller dose (2.5 μM) clearly potentiated the action of GABA. Spontaneous fluctuations of the dorsal root d.c. level in the presence of flurazepam were also observed. It is suggested that flurazepam antagonized amino acid responses by blocking receptor-activated Na⁺ channels on the postsynaptic membranes. However, the potentiation of GABA action on the frog spinal cord may have involved either release of endogenous GABA or “sensitization” of spinal receptors to GABA, an action easily obscured by the predominant antagonistic effect of flurazepam at higher concentrations.