Singlet oxygen scavengers affect laser-dye impairment of endothelium-dependent responses of brain arterioles.

This study investigates the possible role of singlet oxygen in accounting for the inhibitory effect of laser-dye injury on endothelium-dependent dilations. The combination of helium-neon (HeNe) laser (20-s exposure) and intravascular Evans blue impairs endothelium-dependent dilation of mouse pial arterioles by acetylcholine (ACh), bradykinin (BK), and calcium ionophore A23187. Each has a different endothelium-derived mediator (EDRFACh, EDRFBK, EDRFionophore, respectively). In this study, diameters at a craniotomy site were monitored in vivo with an image splitter-television microscope. The laser-dye injury, as usual, abolished the responses 10 and 30 min after injury, with recovery, complete or partial, at 60 min. Dilations by sodium nitroprusside, an endothelium-independent dilator, were not affected by laser-dye. When the singlet oxygen scavengers L-histidine (10(-3) M) and L-tryptophan (10(-2) M) were added to the suffusate over the site, the responses to ACh at 10 and 30 min were relatively intact, the response to BK was partly protected at 10 min only, and the response to ionophore was still totally impaired at 10 and 30 min. Lysine, a nonscavenging amino acid, had no protective effects with any dilator. We postulate that a heat-induced injury initiates a chain of events resulting in prolonged singlet oxygen generation by the endothelial cell (not by the dye). We postulate further that destruction of EDRFACh by singlet oxygen is responsible for laser-dye inhibition of ACh and that generation of the radical must continue for > or = 30 min. On the other hand, the heat injury itself is probably responsible for the elimination of the response to ionophore. Heat plus singlet oxygen generated by heat-damaged tissue may initially impair the response to BK, but by 30 min only the effects of some other factor, presumably heat injury, account for the impaired response to BK.