Brain Peptides And Catecholamines In Cardiovascular Regulation

With the help of recent technological advances in the study of cen tral nervous system function, important strides have been made in our knowledge regarding the pathophysiology of high blood pres sure. The understanding of neural mechanisms involved in the reg ulation of the cardiovascular system is of critical importance to the development of rational approaches to both the treatment and pre vention of this disease. It was in this spirit that a satellite symposium of the 13th Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Hyper tension was held in June 1990, in Bethesda, Maryland. The chapters, in this first of two volumes on the same general theme, are based on lectures presented at the symposium and it is hoped that these sum maries of recent research findings from prominent laboratories around the world will provide a stimulus for future research. The symposium would not have been possible without generous support from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Merck Frosst Canada, G.D. Searle Co., Squibb Institute of Medical Research, Smith, Kline & Beecham Co., Pfizer Co., E.I. Dupont de Nemours Co., Merck, Sharp & Dohme Co., The UpJohn Co., and Wyeth-Ayerst Co. While this volume was being prepared for publication, one of its contributors, Dr. Michael J. Brody, died suddenly. It is with deep sorrow and sympathy that we mourn the loss of our colleague. Dr.

High blood pressure disease is one of the most prevalent pathological conditions in modem society with potentially serious consequences. During the last two decades major progress has been made in the development of rational approaches to the treatment of high blood pressure. A key factor in this progress has been an increase in our understanding of how the brain controls blood pressure. The chapters in the present book, together with those in a previous volume, provide a broad overview of recent progress in our knowledge of the central neural mechanisms involved in the regulation of the cardiovascular system. It is our hope that these essays by leading experts in the field will not only provide a useful source of information, but will also stimulate inquiry leading to new discoveries in this critically important field of research. George Kunos John Ciriello vii List of Contributors Jeffrey J. Anderson, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana 46208, USA Katsuyuki Ando, Fourth Department of Internal Medicine, University of Tokyo School of Medicine, Tokyo 112, Japan Jaideep S. Bains, Department of Physiology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6 Kathleen H. Berecek, Department of Physiology and Biophysics and the Vascular Biology and Hypertension Program, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama 35294, USA Vernon S. Bishop, Department of Physiology, The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas 78284-7756, USA P. A.

During the past several decades, much research effort has gone into the elucidation of the role of neuroendocrine systems as secretory and metabolic regulators of cells of a variety of organs and structures, including the testes, ovaries, adrenals, thyroid, pituitary gland, and mammary glands. However, the role of cells comprising such organs and structures in the modulation of neuroendocrine processes has received considerably less is generally less well appreciated. attention and Nonetheless, it is important that we understand the actions on neuroendocrine systems of substances that reach the brain by way of the vasculature, including hormones, cytokines, toxins, amino acids, drugs, and similar agents. In order to analyze the present state of knowledge on this topic, experimental scientists and clinicians, whose shared interests include actions of circulating agents on the brain, met at a satellite symposium of the XXXI International Congress of Physiological Sciences. This symposium, entitled Circulating Regulatory Factors and Neuroendocrine Function, was held in Smolenice Castle, Czechoslovakia, June 26-July 1, 1989, and reviews delivered at this symposium as invited presentations are published in this volume. Presentations given as free communications have been published separately and are available in Endocrinologia Experimentalis 24: 1-273, 1990.

A concise, in-depth analysis of the status of the sympathetic system in heart diseases This book summarizes the functional status of the sympathetic neural system in cardiological diseased states and highlights aspects of sympathetic neural activity that are important to an overall understanding of the pathophysiology process. Critical reviews of methods for evaluating sympathetic activity are discussed, existing data is closely scrutinized, and attempts are made to delineate the factors derived from increased sympathetic activity. The book provides a physiologically and clinically based approach to the investigation of the involvement of catecholamines in cardiovascular diseases, which makes it a valuable addition to the reference collections of researchers, clinical scientists, and graduate students.

First Published in 1994, this book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date compilation of reviews of recent literature on the anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology of the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS). The chapters are written by internationally recognized experts in the field and include never-before-published data, diagrams, and figures.

"Silent Ischemia, Current Concepts and Management" contains the proceedings of a conference held in Rottach-Egern, West Germany, March 5 to 7, 1987. We are most grateful to the authors for the effort to provide manuscripts before the meeting, to the sponsor, Bayer AG, for their generous support and to the publishers for their efficient collaboration, all of which have made the appearance of this book possible. When discussing silent myocardial ischemia, the first question is: "why is it silent?". To approach this question, a deeper look has to be taken into the pathophysiology of cardiac pain and the excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms involved. It has to be borne in mind that - in contradiction to what the poets have told us so beautifully for many centuries - the heart is a visceral and not a sensitive organ. If asymptomatic ischemia did not carry prognostic significance comparable to the symp tomatic manifestations of ischemia, then the problem of silent ischemia would be very academic and without consequences for treatment. Therefore studies on prognosis of silent ischemia are of great importance, as their results should indicate how aggressively patients are to be managed.