Increased myocardial adenosine release in heart failure

Volume overload congestive heart failure in dogs is associated with a reduced myocardial inotropic responsiveness to the exogenous administration of beta-adrenergic agonists [10, 11]. This same blunted inotropic responsiveness to beta-agonists has now been identified in the failing human myocardium [2]. Volume overload congestive heart failure in dogs is also associated with a reduced resting coronary vascular resistance [7, 12] suggesting the possibility of increased myocardial production of a metabolic vasodilator in the failing heart. Adenosine is a metabolic coronary vasodilator [1] and also has recently been shown to antagonize the inotropic action of beta-adrenergic agonists through a mechanism involving action on the sarcolemmal adenylate cyclase system [4, 13]. Given the findings of blunted inotropic responsiveness of the failing myocardium to beta-adrenergic agonists and reduced coronary vascular resistance in heart failure, we hypothesized that heart failure was associated with elevated myocardial production of adenosine. Accordingly we measured myocardial adenosine release in normal dogs and dogs with volume overload heart failure. Basal levels of myocardial adenosine release were found to be elevated three-fold above normal in dogs with heart failure. It is possible that elevated adenosine release in the failing myocardium contributes both to abnormalities of coronary blood flow and to the blunted inotropic responsiveness of the failing heart to catecholamines.