Pharmacological subclassification of alpha 1-adrenoceptors in vascular smooth muscle

1. We examined whether alpha 1-adrenoceptors in various blood vessels can be divided into subtypes by antagonist affinity or by susceptibility to chloroethylclonidine or nifedipine. 2. Noradrenaline or phenylephrine produced concentration-dependent contractions in all the tissues tested, which were competitively inhibited by phentolamine, yohimbine, prazosin, WB4101 and HV723. However, there were large differences between the tissues in the pA2 values for all the antagonists except phentolamine. 3. The blood vessels could be classified into three groups (I, II and III) on the basis of their affinity variation. In group I (dog mesenteric artery and vein, saphenous vein), the pA2 values for HV723 were greater than 9, and those for HV723 and WB4101 were approximately 1 log unit higher than for prazosin. This rank order of affinity reversed in group II (dog carotid artery and rat thoracic aorta), where prazosin was more potent (pA2 values greater than 9.5) than HV723 or WB4101. In group III (rabbit mesenteric artery, thoracic aorta and carotid artery and guinea-pig thoracic aorta), on the other hand, prazosin, HV723 and WB4101 inhibited the noradrenaline response with a similar affinity (pA2 values ranging from 8 to 9). 4. Yohimbine inhibited the responses to noradrenaline and phenylephrine with a lower affinity than prazosin, HV723 or WB4101. The pA2 values for yohimbine were similar in groups I and II (the values greater than 6.5), which were greater than those in group III (values less than 6.4).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)