Differences in the hypoxic contraction of small isolated pulmonary arteries of cat and rabbit.

In small (less than 300 microns diameter) pulmonary arterial (PA) rings isolated from the cat, hypoxia induced a transient contraction (250 +/- 120 mg, n = 7), whereas in rings of rabbit PA of the same size, hypoxia had no significant effect (n = 19). Precontraction by 40 mmol KCl.1(-1), noradrenaline (NA) 10(-6) mol.1(-1), or histamine (His 10(-5) mol.1(-1)) did not modify this difference between the two species and did not potentiate the hypoxic contraction of small rings of the cat PA. Large rabbit pulmonary arterial segments (300-2000 microns) exhibited no response to hypoxia before precontraction (n = 15). In the presence of procaine (2%) rabbit PA rings (n = 6, small) exhibited no hypoxic contraction. These results in vitro reflect previous in vivo observations.