The effect of acidosis on excitation-contraction coupling in isolated ferret heart muscle.

The contractile response to acidosis is the final product of a number of different changes in the excitation-contraction coupling pathway: (i) Cai increases and subsequently decreases during acidosis; (ii) the action potential becomes longer; (iii) the sensitivity of the contractile proteins to Ca2+ decreases. The increase of Cai and the lengthening of the action potential may help to maintain contractile function, although this advantage may be offset if spontaneous Ca2+ release from the s.r. occurs, secondary to the increase of Cai. The recovery of force shown in figure 1 occurs at a time when the calcium transient is decreasing, and therefore represents an increasing sensitivity of the contractile proteins to Cai, probably due to a recovery of intracellular pH (6), although it is also possible that a disappearance of spontaneous Ca2+ releases from the s.r. may be contributing [2].