Alpha adrenergic receptors in dog coronary arteries as detected with autoradiography

The authors used previously established methods to determine the presence of alpha adrenergic receptors in different sizes of dog coronary arteries using autoradiography of 3H-prazosin (PRAZ) and 125I-BE 2254 (HEAT) to label alpha1 adrenergic receptors and 3H-rauwolscine (RAUW) to label alpha2 adrenergic receptors. Frozen sections of the left main coronary artery (LMA), the left anterior descending artery (LAD) and myocardium were incubated in 3 concentrations of PRAZ (0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 nM) (n=5 dogs), 3 concentrations of RAUW (1, 3 and 5 nM) (n=5) and one concentration of HEAT (50 pM) (n=3). All incubations were done in the absence of (total binding) or presence of (nonspecific binding) 10-5 M phentolamine or yohimbine. The sections were processed for autoradiography and silver grains quantitated using an image analyzer. Analysis of variance determined that there was a significant difference between total and nonspecific binding in the LMA incubated with PRAZ (p < 0.016), but no significant difference between total and nonspecific binding in the LAD (p < 0.19) or in the arterioles (p < 0.68). In the experiments with HEAT, similar results were obtained. With RAUW, there was significant labeling of arterioles (p < 0.004), but not over the LAD (p < 0.11) or the LMA (p < 0.49). The results suggest that the number of coronary alpha1 receptors decreases as vessel size decreases, while the number of alpha2 receptors increases as vessel size decreases