The effect of anesthetics on hydrogen bonds. An infrared study at low anesthetic concentrations.

It is shown that a striking parallelism exists between the anesthetic potency of general halocarbon anesthetics and their influence on the hydrogen bond association constants in N-H...O=C type hydrogen bonds, important for shaping the ion channels. It is further shown that the effect of potent anesthetics (which contain an acidic hydrogen) on the free/associated ratio in such hydrogen bonds is still significant at clinical anesthetic concentrations. It is argued that the results are in keeping with a pluralistic theory of anesthesia based on both hydrophobic and polar interactions.