Alterations in Normal Individuals and Patients With Congestive Heart Failure*

Dynamic exercise increases the number of j-adrenergic receptors in mixed lymphocytes by a mechanism that is incompletely understood. In a set of in vivo studies, we have investigated the effects of dynamic exercise on the subset distribution of circulating lymphocytes and on the number of fJ-adrenergic receptors in each of these subsets in two groups of patients. In healthy subjects, exercise increased plasma norepinephrine and epinephrine and caused lymphocytosis. Whereas the number of The,lper cells increased only modestly, the number of Tsuppressoricytotoxic and natural killer cells more than tripled. The number of f-adrenergic receptors varied among subsets but was not significantly altered by dynamic exercise in any subset except natural killer cells (35% increase, p=0.0302). In a group of patients with congestive heart failure, dynamic exercise increased plasma norepinephrine but did not alter plasma epinephrine and did not