Effects of dopamine on isolated failing rat heart

Dopamine has been used for many years to treat patients with severe heart failure. It is not clear whether improvements of cardiac function may be due to a direct action on heart. This study was aimed to investigate the direct action of dopamine on failing heart. we chose male Wistar rats which had undergone uninephrectomy under ether anaesthesia to induce hypertension to result in heart failure. After 5 weeks the hearts were excised and perfused according to Langerdoff's technique. Heart rate, systolic and diastolic ventricular pressures, the derivative of the intraventricular pressure time ratio, and coronary flow were measured at baseline, at 2 and 5 min and then every 5 min during a 30-min period. Rat hearts were divided into 4 groups of 5 hearts: group 1, perfused without drug; group 2, perfused with dopamine at 4 micrograms/kg/min; group 3, perfused with dopamine at 8 micrograms/kg/min; group 4, perfused with dopamine at 8 micrograms/kg/min and with 100 nM I.C.I. 118.551 (beta 2-ant: beta-2 receptors antagonist) at the same time. Our results show that dopamine induced a negative inotropic effect and a reduction of coronary flow. Moreover, there was a significant chronotropic action even when dopamine was administered at high concentrations. So we found no positive dopamine effect on isolated failured hearts of rat. This might be explained by both alpha-1-induced vasoconstriction and the stimulation of alpha-1B receptors. We conclude that the favourable effects of dopamine in heart failure could be due to DA1 vasodilation rather than to a direct inotropic action on the heart.