Thursday, January 14, 2016

Someone Said Something Smart About Digoxin

"Hypercalcemia does indeed cause muscle spasm, but as someone else wrote, hypercalcemia indicates the calcium levels in blood and not in the sarcoplasmic reticuli.
One example where you can observe that increased calcium leads to increased contraction is when you take the cardiac glycoside, digoxin. Digoxin inhibits the Na+/K+ ATPase causing an increased concentration of intracellular sodium ions. Indirectly, the increased levels of sodium will disturb the sodium gradient (because of the accumulation of sodium ions inside the cell) and stop the Na+/Ca2+ exchanger. The consequence of the disturbance of the sodium/calcium exchanger will lead to the increased levels of calcium and the increased storage of calcium in the sarcoplasmic reticulum and thus cause positive inotropy of the myocytes.
You can read more about it here: Gheorghiade, Mihai, Kirkwood F. Adams, and Wilson S. Colucci. "Digoxin in the management of cardiovascular disorders." Circulation 109.24 (2004): 2959-2964."


Taken from: http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/31735/why-doesn-t-hypercalcemia-cause-muscle-spasms

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