Distribution of local anesthetics in lipid membranes

Abstract

Absorption of local anesthetics into lipid membranes and adsorption onto their surfaces were studied as a function of the pH of aqueous bulk solutions by measuring lipid vesicle electrophoretic mobility, the partition of the anesthetics between the aqueous and membrane phases by the use of fluorescence and radioactive tracer methods, and the effect of the anesthetics on interfacial tension of lipid monolayers formed at the oil/aqueous interface. At a pH much lower than the p K a value of the local anesthetic, the charged form of the local anesthetic was only adsorbed onto the membrane surface, as determined from vesicle electrophoretic mobility, radioisotope tracer and the monolayer surface tension studies. Surface partition coefficients of the charged form of the local anesthetics on phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylserine membranes were obtained from the data of electrophoretic mobilities for lipid vesicles. The surface partition coefficients of various local anesthetics paralleled those of the bulk partition coefficients. As the pH of the solutions increased, the adsorbed amount of the charged form of the anesthetic at the membrane interface decreased, while the absorption of the uncharged form of the local anesthetic into the membrane increased. The total amount of local anesthetic adsorbed per unit area of the membrane generally increased as the pH of the solution increased. This was also observed from the measurements of the fluorescence of local anesthetics adsorbed into the membranes. At lower pH than that corresponding to the p K a value of the local anesthetic, the amount of anesthetic adsorbed depended greatly upon the membrane surface charge. At a higher pH than its p K a, it did not depend appreciably on the surface charge density of the membrane but did depend on the bulk partition coefficients between the aqueous and oil phases.