Drugs and ions influencing noradrenaline uptake and accumulation in smooth muscle cells

Abstract

Noradrenaline (NA) uptake is usually studied either by using radioactively labelled amine and measuring the accumulation of radioactivity or, if sufficient NA is retained, by measuring it chemically. In studies on neuronal uptake where only a single tissue is involved this method gives rise to few problems. In studying extraneuronal uptake, however, where several tissue elements may contribute to uptake it is difficult to be sure what contribution each makes. In this paper I would like to report some results using a third method to measure accumulation, quantitative fluorescence microscopy, which has one outstanding advantage, it measures accumulation in single cells rather than in tissue as a whole.