Age-dependent alterations in nitrous oxide requirement of mice.

To determine the relationship of nitrous oxide requirement to age in mice, the authors repeatedly tested the righting-reflex response in stock CD-1 mice at 50 to 703 days of age. Over this age range, nitrous oxide requirement (+/- SE) progressively decreased from 1.48 +/- 0.02 atm to 1.09 +/- 0.06 atm. A second set of experiments measured changes in nitrous oxide requirement with age in mice selectively bred for resistance (HI mice) and susceptibility (LO mice) to nitrous oxide anesthesia. When tested at two months of age, selected HI and LO mice had nitrous oxide ED50 values of approximately 2.0 and 1.1 atm, respectively. At 11 to 14 months, the nitrous oxide ED50 of the HI mice had decreased to approximately 1.5 atm. In contrast, the nitrous oxide ED50 of the LO mice showed a much smaller decrease over this age range. Thus, the separation in nitrous oxide requirement between the HI and LO lines tended to disappear with age. By correlating the difference in anesthetic requirement between the HI and LO mice with biochemical and biophysical alterations in the central nervous system, studies on aging that use selectively bred lines may be helpful in investigating the mechanism of anesthetic action and the mechanism by which aging affects anesthetic action.