Sodium para-aminobenzoate has been administered orally in doses of 2 grams every two hours

An Applied Photophysics stopped-flow instrument has been used for assaying the CA catalysed CO2 hydration activity. Phenol red (at a concentration of 0.2 mM) has been used as indicator, working at the absorbance maximum of 557 nm, with 10–20 mM Hepes (pH 7.5, for the a-CAs) or TRIS (pH 8.3, for the b-CAs) as buffers, and 20 mM Na2SO4 or 20 mM NaClO4 (for maintaining constant the ionic strength), following the initial rates of the CA-catalyzed CO2 hydration reaction for a period of 10–100 s. The CO2 concentrations ranged from 1.7 to 17 mM for the determination of the kinetic parameters and inhibition constants. For each inhibitor at least six traces of the initial 5–10% of the reaction have been used for determining the initial velocity. The uncatalyzed rates were determined in the same manner and subtracted from the total observed rates. Stock solutions of AMINOBENZOATE SODIUM (1 mM) were prepared in distilled–deionized water and dilutions up to 0.1 nM were done thereafter with distilled–deionized water. Inhibitor and enzyme solutions were preincubated together for 15 min at room temperature prior to assay, in order to allow for the formation of the E–I complex. The inhibition constants were obtained by non-linear least-squares methods using PRISM 3, whereas the kinetic parameters for the uninhibited enzymes from Lineweaver–Burk plots, as reported earlier, and represent the mean from at least three different determinations.