Importance of body temperature and clinical data in behavioral and anesthesia studies.

摘要

To the Editor: We have read with great interest the recent article "Anesthetic Ketamine Impairs Rats' Recall of Previous Information: The Nitric Oxide Synthase N-nitro-L-arginine Methylester Antagonizes this Ketamine-induced Recognition Memory Deficit," and we would like to address some comments. This study stresses that nitric oxide metabolism may modify the anesthetic effects of ketamine. Although this relation has been described previously, the approach using the N-nitro-L-arginine methylester (a nonselective nitric oxide synthase inhibitor) to influence the cognitive deficits induced by the posttraining administration of ketamine was interesting. Moreover, these effects were observed only when associated with a change in room temperature, suggesting that this change is a key factor in this study.