[Catecholamine metabolism in patients with neurological manifestations of spinal osteochondrosis]

Catecholamines content was measured in blood plasma and urine in 104 patients presenting with different neurological syndromes of vertebral osteochondrosis. The results secured were compared to the values of vegetative cardiovascular tests in the same patients. Patients presenting with reflex vegetative muscular-and-tonic, reflex vegetovascular manifestations of vertebral osteochondrosis, and those patients presenting with radix symptomatology as well as those patients with reflex neurodystrophic manifestations (though less evident in the latter) were all diagnosed as having developed relatively high values for blood plasma content of norepinephrine at the expense of degeneration of peripheral vegetative nerve endings and reduction of the normal recapture of this mediator from the blood and its urine elimination. Diagnosing of high values for blood plasma and urine content of norepinephrine against the background of a striking inhibition of indices of vegetative cardiovascular tests in patients with vertebrogenic radix symptomatology suggest involvement into the bodily process of compensation and adaptation of suprasegmental vegetative nerve structures.