The action of histamine on the isolated stomach muscle of the cat.

The effect of histamine on contractile and electric activity was studied in the isolated stomach muscle strips of 138 cats. Histamine dose-dependently produced tonic and phasic contractions of the muscle preparations from the fundus and the corpus but only phasic contraction of the antral muscle preparations. The frequency of gastric slow waves (SWs) was also increased dose-dependently by histamine. The responses of muscle contractions and gastric SW frequency to histamine were completely blocked by pretreatment with pyrilamine (10(-6) M) and were significantly inhibited by atropine (10(-5) M) but not by cimetidine (10(-5) M), hexamethonium (10(-5) M), phentolamine (10(-5) M), or propranolol (10(-5) M). The inhibition by pyrilamine was competitive. Although atropine inhibited the effect of histamine significantly, it could not completely block the effect of histamine even at a high concentration (3 x 10(-5) M). It is concluded that histamine may participate in the regulation of gastric motility in the cat by acting on the H1 receptor to cause the release of acetylcholine and also other contractile substance(s).