Effects of Atropine Sulfate on Simulator Pursuit Tracking Performance

摘要

Atropine sulfate is currently the Army's choice as an antidote to nerve agent poisoning. To assess possible performance changes (visual and psychomotor) of the prophylactic administration of atropine, 10 student volunteers were tested in the BLASER tracking simulator. Following a training period these paid volunteers tracked scale model targets at a simulated distance of 1 km, at an angular velocity of 5 mrad/s, and under bright and dim ambient light levels. The tracking data collected were standard deviation (SD) error scores for the horizontal and vertical axes. Atropine was administered in five dosages: placebo, 0.25, 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 mg. The doses were adjusted above and below a 70 kg standard body weight for each subject. Analyses of variance results for the vertical and horizontal axes found no significant performance decrements attributable to the drug administration. From these results, a soldier's performance in combat of tasks which include a strong psychomotor component should not be affected if the soldier autoinjects the 2 mg dose of atropine contained in a single standard-issue vial. (Author)