Nylidrin: a potent anti-hypertensive agent in hypertensive rats.

Nylidrin HCl lowered the blood pressure and increased the heart rate of conscious, spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR), Goldblatt hypertensive rats, and DOCA hypertensive rates. In SHR, the minimum effective dose was 0.5 mg/kg, s.c. At that dose, the anti-hypertensive activity of nylidrin lasted more than 3 hours. Propranolol reversed both effects on blood pressure and heart rate by nylidrin, whereas atenolol, a specific cardiac beta 1 blocker, only blocked or reversed the tachycardia caused by nylidrin but did not block the anti-hypertensive effect of the compound. In normotensive rats of Wistar/Kyoto strain (WKY) and Holtzman strain, nylidrin at 5 or 10 mg/kg, s.c., produced a transient hypotensive effect which lasted less than an hour and tachycardia that persisted for several hours. In WKY, atenolol prolonged the hypotensive activity of the compound by partially reversing the tachycardia. These observations indicate that SHR is more sensitive than WKY to the anti-hypertensive activity of nylidrin, which is probably caused by vasodilatation mediated by beta 2 receptors.