Friday, December 13, 2013

Excitatory Amino Acids in the Rostral Ventrolateral Medulla Support Blood Pressure in Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats


 

Satoru Ito, Kazutoshi Komatsu, Kazuyoshi Tsukamoto and Alan F. Sved

The rvlm is important to tonic and phasic control of blood pressure. It has been shown in normotensive anesthetized rat that injection of kyn into RVLM has no effect on BP. However if you block CVLM and give kyn into RVLM you we see a similar decrease as if you inhibited the RVLM, suggesting that excitatory amino acids are driving both inhibition and excitation in the RVLM.  The purpose of this study was to determine the role that excitation and inhibition are playing in hypertension.  They used microinjection technique in order to address their questions. What they found was that in response to kyn into RVLM the WKYs had no response however the SHR had a decrease in bp of 40mmHG.  They then injected muscimol into CVLM and then kyn into RVLM. They found that after blockade of CVLM in both groups they saw a decrease in bp when they gave kyn into the rvlm. These data suggests that CVLM must be provide not only inhibitory input but also some non-excitatory amino acid input. Also that excitatory amino acids are playing a major role in driving rvlm activity in hypertensive animals.


-MD

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