Effects of Soman or Pyridostigmine Bromide on Primate Equilibrium Performance and Serum Cholinesterase Activity

摘要

Well-trained rhesus monkeys were tested for their ability to perform a compensatory tracking task under the influence of intramuscularly injected doses of soman or pyridostigmine bromide. The effect of soman on performance increased very rapidly with increasing dose, ranging from no effect to complete incapacitation. Inhibition of serum ChE activity 90 min after soman exposure also increased rapidly with increasing soman dosage. For pyridostigmine bromide (PYR), only the highest dose produced a clear performance decrement. Performance 30 to 60 min after the highest dose was significantly worse than after any other dose. Performances following the other three doses did not differ significantly from each other or from performances following placebo injections. We concluded that, for personnel under the threat of exposure to organophosphates, the prophylactic use of PYR as a pretreatment drug is unlikely to interfere with normal performance. Comparing the effects of these two anticholinesterases on performance, the soman dose-effect function is much steeper that the PYR dose-effect function.