Adenosine handling in interstitia of cremaster muscle studied by bioassay

We used video-microscopic techniques to study responses of rat cremaster muscle arterioles to adenosine (ADO) placed in a bathing solution in an effort to determine 1) the sensitivity of these vessels to local interstitial ADO concentration and 2) the parameters of interstitial adenosine handling. Two vessels, located at different depths (approximately 40 and 115 microns) below the surface of the tissue, were studied simultaneously. Invariably, a higher bath ADO concentration was required to induce vasodilation in the deeper vessel; the concentration required for 50% dilation response (EC50) for ADO dilation increased at an average of 1.8 +/- 0.2 log10 U/100 microns of depth into the tissue. This result was shown to be due to a standing gradient in interstitial ADO concentration. By extrapolating results to the tissue surface, we estimate that the EC50 for arteriolar dilation to local interstitial ADO is approximately 0.1 microM. The steepness of the tissue ADO gradient indicates that the rate constant for interstitial ADO loss is near 0.24/s. The gradients for nonmetabolizable adenosine analogues were less than 1/10th as steep as that for ADO itself. Qualitatively similar results were obtained from experiments on hamster cremaster muscle preparations.