Abstract
Adrenaline, as a circulating hormone, is unlikely to have any role in promoting elevated blood pressure. When adrenaline is infused into the bloodstream, the plasma concentration must be increased several-fold — well above the range encountered during most daily activities — before any change in blood pressure is observed; and the change, when it occurs, is a fall in diastolic blood pressure together with increased systolic blood pressure (Clutter et al., 1980). Over recent years, however, there has been considerable interest in the possibility that adrenaline may promote hypertension by a postulated neurotransmitter — or ‘co-transmitter’ role, in which it is released from sympathetic nerve endings along with noradrenaline and activates a positive feedback loop through the putative pre-synaptic β-adrenoceptor, and hence causes a sustained increase in noradrenaline release (Adler-Graschinsky & Langer, 1975; Stjarne & Brundin, 1975; Dahlof, 1981).
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© 1984 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Brown, M.J. et al. (1984). The role of adrenaline in essential hypertension in man. In: Paton, W., Mitchell, J., Turner, P. (eds) IUPHAR 9th International Congress of Pharmacology. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86029-6_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86029-6_9
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