Background: Children often require sedation for long non-invasive diagnostic procedures. Dexmedetomidine is a highly selective alpha 2-adrenoceptor agonist with sedative, anxiolytic and analgesic properties. It mimics natural sleep allows patients to easily arouse minimal effects on respiration airway patency. Objective: To assess the successful completion of pediatric procedures intranasal dex...

Background—Coronary vessel tone is modulated in part by -adrenergic relaxation. However, the implication of specific -adrenoceptor subtypes and their downstream vasorelaxing mechanism(s) in human coronary resistance arteries is poorly defined. 3-Adrenoceptors were recently shown to vasodilate animal vessels and are expressed in human hearts. Methods and Results—We examined the expression and fu...

β-Adrenoceptor activation increases intracellular cAMP levels and consequently induces exocytotic amylase release in parotid acinar cells. Phosphodiesterase (PDE) catalyses the hydrolysis of cAMP, which terminates the downstream signaling of this second messenger. We investigated the involvement of PDE4, a cAMP-PDE, in β-adrenoceptor agonistinduced amylase release in mouse, rat and rabbit parot...

The median preoptic nucleus (MnPO) in the lamina terminalis receives a prominent catecholaminergic innervation from the dorsomedial and ventrolateral medulla. The present investigation used whole cell patch-clamp recordings in rat brain slice preparations to evaluate the hypothesis that presynaptic adrenoceptors could modulate GABAergic inputs to MnPO neurons. Bath applications of norepinephrin...

Patients in the intensive care unit frequently experience delirium, anxiety, and agitation, with a variety of treatments used. This article discusses the role of an alpha-adrenoceptor agonist, dexmedetomidine, and its clinical relevance and advantages for the agitated patient.

Pharmacological analysis alone has failed to clarify the role of the three alpha(1)-adrenoceptor subtypes in modulating vascular tone, due to a lack of sufficiently selective antagonists, particularly for the alpha (1B)-adrenoceptor, and the complexity when three receptor subtypes are potentially activated by the same agonist. We adopted a combined genetics/ pharmacology strategy based on the a...

Migraine is a common, disabling problem with three phases: premonitory, main headache attack, and postdrome. The headache phase is thought to involve activation of trigeminal neurons, whereas the premonitory and postdrome phases may involve dopaminergic mechanisms. In animal studies, dopamine has been found to cause vasodilation of cranial arteries at very low doses. Using intravital microscopy...