The reactivity of pulmonary veins during adaptation from pre- to postnatal life is not well characterized. With an in vitro organ bath technique, the responses to the contractile and relaxant agonists U-46619 (10-10 to 3 × 10-6 M) and acetylcholine (10-9 to 10-4 M) were compared in adjacent conduit pulmonary vein and artery rings from 66 piglets aged 1 wk preterm to 14 days of postnatal life an...

One of the primary cardiovascular adjustments to hyperthermia is a sympathetically mediated increase in vascular resistance in the viscera. Nonneural factors such as a change in vascular tone or reactivity may also contribute to this response. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine whether vascular smooth muscle tone is altered during heating to physiologically relevant temperatures ...

PURPOSE We investigated the effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE)- inhibitor, statin, and beta-blocker usage before coronary bypass surgery (CABG) on vascular reactivity of the internal mammary artery (IMA). METHODS Patients, who underwent elective CABG were evaluated. Samples of IMA obtained from 22 patients were divided into 4 groups in respect of drugs used by patients before bypas...

We hypothesized that prolonged angiotensin II (AngII) infusion would alter vascular reactivity by enhancing superoxide anion (O-.2) generation. Male C57BL/6 mice were infused with AngII at 400 ng/kg/min (n=16, AngII mice) or vehicle (n=16, sham mice) for 2 weeks via subcutaneous osmotic minipumps. Contraction and relaxation of mesenteric resistance vessels (MRVs) were assessed using a Mulvany-H...

Perinatal asphyxia and aerodigestive symptoms are troublesome. We tested the hypothesis that pharyngeal provocation alters proximal and distal aerodigestive reflex coordination and kinetics in infants with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), compared with healthy controls. Specifically, we characterized the sensory-motor properties of pharyngeal provocation-induced effects on upper esophagea...

We investigated whether organ-specific differences exist in the role of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in hyporeactivity to vasoconstrictors following 20 h in vitro exposure of isolated superior mesenteric, renal, hepatic and coronary arteries from the rat to bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). LPS attenuated contraction in response to depolarizing KCl in all arteries. Maximum contracti...

Cysteinyl-leukotrienes and histamine are the major determinants of inherent tone in isolated human bronchi, which is mainly the result of a balance of continual production and release of contractile mediator, in particular cysteinyl-leukotrienes and to a lesser extent histamine, and on the other side bronchodilating prostanoids. Cysteinyl-leukotrienes are also powerful constrictors of isolated ...

The aim of the present experiments was to study the effects of exogenously added anandamide on transient norepinephrine (NE)-induced contractions in mesenteric beds isolated from adult male Sprague-Dawley rats 6 h after the i.p. administration of 5 mg kg(-1) lipopolysaccharide (LPS). LPS treatment induced a 3-fold increase in total nitric-oxide synthase (NOS) activity without modifying either t...

Le Noble, Ferdinand A. C., Karin Ruijtenbeek, Susanne Gommers, Jo G. R. De Mey, and Carlos E. Blanco. Contractile and relaxing reactivity in carotid and femoral arteries of chicken embryos. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 278: H1261–H1268, 2000.—In the embryo, hypoxemia causes redistribution of cardiac output from the periphery toward the heart and the brain. In view of this, we investigated de...

The aim of this study was to compare the vascular reactivity and morphology of iliac artery (IA) in adult spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and hereditary hypertriglyceridemic (hHTG) rats. The isolated rings of iliac artery (IA) from Wistar rats (controls), SHR and hHTG rats were used for measurement of relaxant responses to acetylcholine (ACh) and contractile responses to noradrenaline (NA...