In intact porcine aorta, endothelium-derived nitric oxide released on thrombin stimulation inhibits the concomitant production of endothelin. Experiments were designed to examine the effect of hirudin (which inactivates thrombin) and the nitrovasodilators nitroglycerin and 3-morpholinosydnonimine on the spontaneous and thrombin-stimulated release of endothelin in intact blood vessels. Endotheli...

The goal of the present study was to evaluate the effects of endothelin, a newly discovered very potent vasoconstrictor secreted by endothelial cells, on the coronary vascular bed. For this purpose, the effects of endothelin injected intracoronarily were tested in open-chest anesthetized dogs with the circumflex coronary artery cannulated and perfused at a constant pressure of 100 mm Hg. Circum...

When mutations in two different genes produce the same mutant phenotype, it suggests that the encoded proteins either interact with each other, or act in parallel to fulfill a similar purpose. Haploinsufficiency of Neurofibromin and over-expression of Endothelin 3 both cause increased numbers of melanocytes to populate the dermis during mouse development, and thus we are interested in how these...

BACKGROUND Although plasma endothelin concentrations are elevated in patients with pulmonary hypertension, the precise sites of endothelin production have not been defined. We investigated the endothelin production in the pulmonary circulation of patients with mitral stenosis and its effects on pulmonary vascular tone. METHODS AND RESULTS We measured plasma concentrations of endothelin-1, ang...

Endothelin-1 is a potent vasoconstrictor and mitogenic peptide that is implicated in the atherosclerosis of apolipoprotein E-deficient mice and may promote atherogenesis in humans. We hypothesized that endothelin-1 might promote the adhesion of monocytes to endothelial cells, a key early event in atherosclerosis. We investigated the adhesion of primary human monocytes (isolated by elutriation) ...

Infusion of endothelin has been observed to increase hematocrit, and the peptide also stimulates release of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) both in vitro and in vivo. We studied the relation of these two actions of endothelin in anesthetized, bilaterally nephrectomized Sprague-Dawley rats. Infusion of endothelin (25 ng/kg/min) for 45 minutes produced a modest increase in blood pressure of 12% ...

Intravenous (bolus) administration of endothelin results in a transient fall in blood pressure that is accentuated in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) compared with Wistar-Kyoto normotensive rats (WKY). In attempting to discern possible mechanisms underlying this depressor response, we examined the ability of endothelin to release atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) from isolated, spontaneousl...

Release of endothelin-1, a novel potent vasoconstrictor peptide originally isolated from endothelial cells, from cultured bovine endothelial cells has been shown to be stimulated by arginine vasopressin and angiotensin II. To elucidate the cellular mechanism by which endothelin-1 is released by these vasoconstrictors, we tested the effects of several compounds on the agonist-induced endothelin-...

In this study we used endothelin as a paradigm to explore the concept that some vasoactive agents, acting through mobilization of Ca2+ and stimulation of protein kinase C, can interact with human skeletal muscle and modify its glucose transport. Cultured human skeletal myoblasts from the vastus lateralis demonstrated two subclasses of high-affinity endothelin receptors and a robust increase in ...

OBJECTIVE(S) The role of the Apoptosis repressor with caspase recruitment domain (ARC) in apoptosis and in certain hypertrophic responses has been previously investigated, but its regulation of Endothelin-1 induced cardiac hypertrophy remains unknown. The present study discusses the inhibitory role of ARC against endothelin-induced hypertrophy. RESULTS In present study Endothelin treated card...