Does shear stress regulate endothelin-1 release in cultured endothelial cells?
Shear stress exerts a biphasic effect on endothelin-1 release in endothelial cells, stimulating it via PKC at low or brief shear and inhibiting it via NO/cGMP at higher, sustained shear.
The effect of shear stress on the release of endothelin-1 (ET-1) from endothelial cells is at present controversial with various investigators observing an increase and others observing a decrease. Our data reveal that the release of ET-1 from primary cultures of human umbilical vein endothelial cells varies with the duration and the level of shear. Sustained exposure to low levels of shear (1.8 dyn/cm2) or a brief exposure ( or = 6 h dramatically inhibited ET-1 release and led to 0-70% inhibition of cumulative release by 16 h. Pretreatment with N omega-nitro-L-arginine (L-NNA) reversed this suppression in a dose-dependent manner, implicating either nitric oxide (NO) and/or guanosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (cGMP) as a requirement for shear-mediated inhibition of ET-1 release. Treatment of stationary cultures with 8-bromo-cGMP and atrial natriuretic peptide mimicked the inhibition of ET-1 release caused by shear and revealed that cGMP is capable of inhibiting ET-1. Likewise, the inhibitory effects of shear were potentiated and diminished by 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine (IBMX) and methylene blue, respectively. Thus cGMP also appears to exert an inhibitory effect in cells exposed to shear.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Kuchan et al. (1993) studied this question.