Hemodynamic consequences of resistance vessel rarification and of changes in smooth muscle sensitivity

Alterations in resistance vessel design in form of an increased wall/lumen ratio appears to markedly influence the resistance control in primary hypertension (Folkow et al. 1973). The raised resistance has also been suggested to be a consequence of a rarification of resistence vessels or/and to an increased vascular smooth muscle sensitivity. Thus two series paired experiments were performed on matched normotensive rats, utilizing the responses of their hindquarter vascular beds during constant flow perfusion. In the first series, the precapillary resistance vessels section was first "rarified" by graded microplugging, thereby raising resistance at maximal dilatation about 50 per cent. Then the vascular responses to noradrenaline were studied to characterize the dose-response or "resistance curves". In the second series the vascular smooth muscle sensitivity to noradrenaline of one of the hindquarters was changed by infusion of phentolamine. The resistance responses were then recorded and the ensuing "resistance curves" compared. --These changes of resistance vascular architecture and vascular smooth muscle sensitivity, respectively, led to mutually different characters of the "resistance curves". Both of these differ, however, in virtually all important respects from those curves characterizing vascular beds of spontaneously or renal hypertensive rats.