Cardiovascular effects of atrial extracts in anesthetized rats

Tissue extracts derived from atria or ventricles of Sprague-Dawley rats were injected into Inactin-anesthetized assay rats. Compared with ventricular extracts, atrial extracts produced a 20 mmHg (1 mmHg = 133.322 Pa) fall in mean arterial blood pressure. This fall resulted from failure to increase cardiac output in compensation for peripheral vasodilation. Two factors were responsible: depression of heart rate (by 25 beats/min) and failure to increase cardiac performance. The time patterns and magnitudes of changes in cardiovascular parameters after cardiac extracts were not changed by prior atropinization. However, assay rats that were vagotomized showed no cardiac slowing after atrial extract and showed a significantly smaller decrease in mean arterial blood pressure than did sham-vagotomized or intact rats. Another group of assay rats was vagotomized as well as carotid-sinus-denervated before extract injection. In these rats the degree of hypotension caused by atrial extract was significantly greater than that observed after vagotomy alone and was not significantly different from that observed in rats with intact innervation. The results suggest that the hypotension that is caused by atrial extract, but not by ventricular extracts, results in part from the reflex effects of direct stimulation of chemosensitive cardiopulmonary receptors with vagal afferents and partly from the reflex effects of baroreceptor unloading. Ventricular extract had no hypotensive effect in any group of assay rats.