The synthesis of new barbiturate esters derivatives as intravenous anesthetics: a new dimension of anesthesia route part-IV

Conventional 1-methyl-2-oxobarbiturates and 1-methyl-2-thiobarbituates which are employed as anesthetics tend to accumulate in the body due to their slow rate of metabolism. As a result, the use of these compounds is restricted to either as an induction agent for anesthesia, subsequently maintained by volatile anesthetics or to a short surgical procedures only. In order to overcome the limitations of application of barbiturates as general anesthetics, avoiding the use of volatile agents, an attempt was made to the structural modifications of barbiturates molecules as intravenous anesthetics. In view of this contexts, it was conceived that, by incorporating metabolically labile ester functions in one or both of the side chain of barbiturates ring system, it could be achieved. Since this procedure could diminish the likelihood of barbiturates to be accumulated in the body, it might be possible to get safer barbiturate intravenous anesthetics.  This classification arose from the observation that whilst the biological properties of some drugs are extremely sensitive to minor changes in stereo-chemical feature, electron distribution and substituent, there are many other drugs which exhibit similar patterns of biological behavior, despite a wide diversity in their chemical configurations. This has been appeared to be the case with the barbiturate esters as discussed in this communication.