Vascular smooth muscle relaxation by nitro compounds: reduced relaxation and cGMP elevation in tolerant vessels and reversal of tolerance by dithiothreitol.

Smooth muscle preparations obtained from bovine mesenteric artery were incubated with high concentrations of nitroglycerin (NG) or nitroprusside (NP) at elevated pH. This treatment was found to make the vessels tolerant towards both the relaxant and cGMP elevating action of a challenging dose of nitrocompounds when tested on the histamine contracted vessels. Also, some cross-tolerance between NP and NG could be found since pretreatment of the vessels with NP caused a reduction in both the relaxant and the cGMP elevating action of NG. The NG induced tolerance could be partly reversed by treatment with the disulfide reducing agent dithiothreitol (DTT). These results are suggested to strengthen the evidence for cGMP as a mediator of vascular smooth muscle relaxation induced by nitrocompounds. The ability of DTT to partly reverse this tolerance indicates the existence of critical tissue sulfhydryl groups with which the nitrocompounds interact. There also seemed to exist certain differences in the mechanism of action between NG and NP since the tolerance induced against NG was much more pronounced than was the case for NP.