A comparison of the vasopressin response of rats to intraperitoneal and intravenous administration of hypertonic saline, and the effect of opioid and aminergic antagonists.

The vasopressin response of rats to i.p. injection of hypertonic sodium chloride (1.5 mol/l) was compared with that following i.v. infusion of 1.05 mol sodium chloride/l. The two regimes produced a similar vasopressin response in terms of the osmotic threshold, although the slopes of the plot of plasma vasopressin levels against plasma osmolality were not identical. Pretreatment with naloxone and levallorphan increased the resting vasopressin levels and effectively potentiated vasopressin release in response to hypertonic saline by reducing the osmotic threshold for hormone release. Thus, opioid peptides appear to exert an inhibitory effect on vasopressin release under resting and stimulated conditions. The adrenoreceptor antagonists propranolol, phenyoxybenzamine and phentolamine produced a fall in resting vasopressin concentrations while propranolol and phenoxybenzamine potentiated the osmotic release of vasopressin in association with a fall in the osmotic threshold. This would suggest that noradrenergic pathways are excitatory at rest while having an inhibitory effect on the osmotic response. Metoclopramide also produced a fall in resting plasma vasopressin concentrations while increasing the osmotic response. In contrast haloperidol did not affect the vasopressin response.