Muscle sympathetic activity and plasma noradrenaline in normotensive and hypertensive man

Micro-electrode recordings of muscle sympathetic activity were made in the peroneal nerve of 20 normotensive subjects and 18 patients with essential hypertension resting in the recumbent posture. The level of sympathetic activity was quantitated as bursts/100 heart beats or bursts/min. On another occasion blood was sampled from an antecubital vein and analyzed for plasma noradrenaline using radioenzymatic technique. In both groups the level of sympathetic activity increased with age and taking age into account there was no significant difference in sympathetic activity between normotensive and hypertensive subjects. There was no significant difference in plasma levels of noradrenaline between the groups. Both for normotensive and for hypertensive subjects there was a positive correlation between a subject's level of sympathetic activity and his plasma concentration of noradrenaline, and the regression lines did not differ significantly between the groups. It is suggested (a) that outflow of transmitter from sympathetic terminals in muscles contributes significantly to plasma concentrations of noradrenaline at rest both in normotensive and hypertensive subjects: (b) that neither for muscle sympathetic activity nor for plasma noradrenaline do the resting levels differ between normotensive and hypertensive subjects.