Talk:Physostigmine

synthesis
The synthesis section is horrendously written, yet appears to be factually correct. For the love of all things encyclopaedic, how could the author fail to provide citations for the relevant Julian publications after giving their titles in the text? Obviously the author had access to these papers... For shame!

If I get around to it - which I probably won't - I might rewrite this section for readability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.130.81.47 (talk) 13:08, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Moved historic info from the Calabar bean article
There was a huge chunk of drug information in the Calabar bean article ported from the 1911 Britannica, I've moved that into this article. Hopefully someone who knows more about pharmaceuticals can pare that historical info down into something that's useful for this article, but it definitely seems more appropriate here in the physostigmine article than in the Calabar bean article. RainbowCrane 01:51, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Percy Julian
I'm curious as to why Percy Julian is hardly mentioned at all in this article. After all, he was the first person who was able to synthesize physostigmine.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 05:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * As of 2021, he's mentioned seven times. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 04:52, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Physostigmine, GHB reversal
I deleted this edit. Yes, it has been used according to a communication.

Anecdotal communication: N=2;

Erratum missing; Later discussion is controversial;

Later review of this use on more cases comes to the conclusion that this is a dangerous practice, lacking scientific study and evidence, is ineffective.

So it is by no means an accepted clinical practice, but more an attempt, which later got rejected. I believe the clinical uses should have a broad and accepted evidence base and be accepted practice. To include everything which has once been tried, suspected or speculated is dangerously misleading and lacking notability in this section. 70.137.181.232 (talk) 08:55, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Structure
Who changed the structure formula such that the letters are huge? 70.137.138.233 (talk) 10:27, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Not sure what went wrong with the image, but I have replaced it with one that displays correctly. -- Ed (Edgar181) 11:41, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Source for depression as a side-effect
The following artcicle may be a source for the statment in the last paragraph that depression i a side effect of Physostigmine

Neuropsychopharmacology (1997) 17 264-273.

Depressive Response to Physostigmine Challenge in Borderline Personality Disorder Patients

Bonnie J Steinberg 1 MD, Robert Trestman Ph.D, MD1, Vivian Mitropoulou MA1, Michael Serby MD1, Jeremy Silverman Ph.D1,Emil Coccaro MD2, Susan Weston MD3, Marie deVegvar MD4 and Larry J Siever MD1 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.121.239.67 (talk) 14:05, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Tertiary Amine
Just because a compound has a tertiary amine group does not mean it will be able to diffuse across the blood brain barrier as far as I know (the same compound may have other hydrophilic groups that prevent this). I made a temporary edit to prevent future confusion, but if someone knows for sure that there is no Tertiary amine transporter or something then the whole "tertiary amine" phrase should be removed entirely. Repapetilto (talk) 23:48, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Unclear
"Physostigmine also has other proposed uses: it could reverse undesired side effects of benzodiazepines such as diazepam, alleviating anxiety and tension."

Is this sentence saying that anxiety and tension are side effects of benzodiazepines? Perhaps it occurs in rare cases but generally benzos are used to *treat* anxiety. I have no idea what this sentence is trying to tell us. 74.80.58.186 (talk) 02:22, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Contradiction?
The intro section says that Physostigmine is a reversible inhibitor, while a later section calls it irreversible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.171.25.102 (talk) 12:57, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Physostigmine is not actually a reversible inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase: it is a pseudo-irreversible inhibitor. The N-methylcarbamoyl is transferred to the active site serine in the same way as alkylphosphoryl group of OP insecticides or nerve agents. The difference is that the methylcarbamoyl group decarbamoylates as a measurable rate, whereas dephosphorylation rates are extremely slow. A number of carbamate insecticides have the same mode of action, e.g. carbaryl ("Sevin"). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Philipjewess (talk • contribs) 16:42, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Formatting
Please do not leave messed-up formatting for others to clean up -if it doesn't look right under Show Preview, then don't Save Page. But you knew that... Xprofj (talk) 12:39, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Chemistry
The synthetic details are out of place in Wikipedia. Pictorial Reaction Schemes are fine, but writing out the synthetic procedure just wastes space, is of little practical use (without a lot of the original details that have been omitted), and contravenes Wikipedia's policy about not giving recipes. They will be removed unless someone has strong and rational objections. Xprofj (talk) 12:39, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I ripped out a lot of it. DMacks (talk) 03:17, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

History section
Hello, so I have made a history section for physostigmine. This is part of a class project of mine. I am an undergraduate chemistry student. N8iefree (talk) 18:22, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Myasthenia Gravis
Hey I just noticed that there is no mention of myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease, in this article. here are some references. PMID: 4347296, 9818874, 18567872

Uses
The line 'It has been shown to improve long term memory.[5] ' refers to a source labeled as Krus et al. 1968. I am unable to find a legitimate source to back up this citation. The line should be removed unless anyone can clarify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justinsheataylor (talk • contribs) 17:52, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Clinical Uses section repetition
The idea of using Physostigmine to treat GHB poisoning is mentioned twice in this section (beginning and end), and it would be nice if the sources in the first mention were merged with the second. Myoglobin (talk) 00:48, 26 March 2017 (UTC)