Microvascular tone in a skeletal muscle of spontaneously hypertensive rats.

We studied the degree of arteriolar smooth muscle constriction in the spinotrapezius muscle microcirculation of spontaneously hypertensive rats and their normotensive controls, Wistar-Kyoto rats. The constriction was expressed in the form of a nondimensional tone as the difference between steady state and dilated diameter (after papaverine treatment) divided by the dilated diameter. Both animal strains showed on average a progressive increase of tone toward the more distal arterioles, with a peak tone being reached in the transverse arterioles. Tone values in the hypertensive animals were consistently elevated. The number of arterioles that had more than 5% tone (so-called responder arterioles) was higher in the hypertensive animals. These studies suggest that, besides the anatomical adjustments documented earlier in our laboratory in the arteriolar network of this muscle, functional adjustments in the form of an elevated microvascular tone are associated with the elevated resistance in spontaneously hypertensive rats.