In canine cutaneous veins, cooling augments the contractile responses evoked by sympathetic nerve stimulation despite a cooling-induced reduction in the release of norepinephrine. With exogenous norepinephrine, the increased responsiveness observed during cooling results from enhanced sensitivity of the postjunctional alpha-2 adrenoceptors. The present experiments were performed to analyze the ...

Compared with adipose tissue from other mammals, porcine adipose tissue has stringent specificity for stimulation of lipolysis by analogs of norepinephrine. This study was to ascertain whether the specificity for control was reflected in the concentration of tissue cyclic AMP (cAMP). Adipose tissue slices were incubated and concentrations of tissue cAMP and free fatty acids (FA) released to the...

An azide analog, 2-[4-(4-azidobenzoyl)piperazin-1-yl]-4-amino-6, 7-dimethoxyquinazoline (CP59,430), of the highly selective alpha 1-adrenergic receptor antagonist prazosin was synthesized and its effects on rat hepatic membrane and affinity-purified alpha 1-adrenergic receptor preparations were examined. CP59,430 behaved as a competitive antagonist before photolysis. When the membrane or purifi...

Although the tricyclic antidepressants, such as desipramine (DMI), are among the most efficacious treatments for adult depression, they are not effective in treating childhood and adolescent depression. Because the adrenergic nervous system is not fully developed until late adolescence, we hypothesized that the mechanisms regulating receptor density may not yet be mature in young mammals. To te...

The genetically, seasonally, and diet-induced obese, glucose-intolerant states in rodents, including ob/ob mice, have each been associated with elevated hypothalamic levels of norepinephrine (NE). With the use of quantitative autoradiography on brain slices of 6-wk-old obese (ob/ob) and lean mice, the adrenergic receptor populations in several hypothalamic nuclei were examined. The binding of [...

BACKGROUND & AIM Alpha-amylase in both blood and saliva has been used as a diagnostic parameter. While studies examining alpha-amylase activity in saliva have shown that it is sensitive to physiological and psychological challenge of the adrenergic system, no challenge studies have attempted to elucidate the role of the adrenergic system in alpha-amylase activity in blood. We set out to examine...