Investigation of the effect of anaesthesia on nasal absorption of insulin in rats

Abstract

This paper describes the investigation of the effect of a range of anaesthetics on the nasal absorption of insulin using the fall in blood glucose as an indication of insulin absorption. Insulin was administered as a solution in combination with the absorption enhancer sodium deoxycholate. Sagatal and Hypnorm anaesthetics were used as examples of parenterally administered anaesthetics and halothane was used as an example of an inhaled anaesthetic. One control group did not receive an anaesthetic. The greatest absorption was seen after anaesthesia with Sagatal and Hypnorm. The halothane group showed a smaller effect and the non-anaesthetised group showed little response. The study demonstrated that there is a difference in the absorption of nasally administered insulin in relation to the use of different anaesthetic agents. The differences in absorption are proposed to be due to an effect of the anaesthetic agents to a variable degree on the mucociliary clearance.