Repletion of the Catecholamine of the Heart after Reserpine Administration.

羽野 壽 ・岩 田 平太郎 ・岩 田 宣芳 ・本 間 弘茂 A difference has been demonstrated between the total catecholamine contents of the atrium and the ventricle in the dog heart (1) and in the rabbit heart (2) : the level being higher in the atrium than in the ventricle. Moreover, a depletion of catecholamine in various tissues after reserpine injection was reported by many workers (3-6) and several studies (7, 8) have indicated that the heart is capable of taking up noradrenaline from the circulating blood. Recently, Sakaguchi et al. (9) assayed the adrenaline and noradrenaline content of the rat heart at various times after reserpine administration and observed that the nor adrenaline content of the rat heart was usually reduced by 6 hours ter reserpine administration, but began to increase 24 hours after the reserpine treatment, and had returned to normal within a month. Other workers (10) showed that maximal depletion of cardiac catecholamine occurred 4 hours after a single dose of reserpine to the rat, and the normal level was not regained until about 10 days after the dose. However, no experiments were made on the difference between the recovery of the catecholamine contents of the atrium and the ventricle after reserpine administration. The purpose of the present studies was to obtain information on this point.