W Persons | PubMed Health

PubMed1984

Genetic predisposition to hypertension, elevated blood pressure and pain sensitivity: a functional analysis.

Pain sensitivity was examined in Dahl hypertension-sensitive (DS) and Dahl hypertension-resistant (DR) rats. The results indicated that hypertensive DS rats had a reduced sensitivity to painful stimulation compared to normotensive DS rats or compared to DR rats. Furthermore, the lower pain sensitivity of even normotensive DS vis-a-vis normotensive DR rats was not due to genetic factors but due to slight variations in blood pressure between lines. These results provide additional experimental support for the contention that elevations in blood pressure result in decreased pain sensitivity.

Animals↗

PubMed1983

Does pyruvate prevent acrylamide neurotoxicity? Implications for disease pathogenesis.

We used the prototype environmental neurotoxin, acrylamide monomer, to evaluate the hypothesis that neurotoxin-induced nerve fiber degeneration results from inactivation of axonal glycolytic enzymes. Treating intoxicated rats with sodium pyruvate, we hypothesized, would bypass the putative neurotoxin-induced blockade in glycolysis, thus ameliorating neurobehavioral and morphologic measures of neurotoxicity. After establishing that pyruvate itself did not affect behavior, we examined its effects on acrylamide-intoxicated animals. Pyruvate treatment had a significant effect on only one of eight neurobehavioral measures, though others showed similar trends. A morphologic observation of lumbar dorsal root ganglion cell bodies and peripheral nerves failed to show an effect of pyruvate. Those results suggested that inactivation of glycolytic enzymes alone is not a sufficient explanation of pathogenesis.

Acrylamides↗