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Endothelin B receptor dysfunction mediates elevated myogenic tone in cerebral arteries from aged male Fischer 344 rats

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Abstract

The human brain requires adequate cerebral blood flow to meet the high demand for nutrients and to clear waste products. With age, there is a chronic reduction in cerebral blood flow in small resistance arteries that can eventually limit proper brain function. The endothelin system is a key mediator in the regulation of cerebral blood flow, but the contributions of its constituent receptors in the endothelial and vascular smooth muscle layers of cerebral arteries have not been well defined in the context of aging. We isolated posterior cerebral arteries from young and aged Fischer 344 rats, as well as ETB receptor knock-out rats and mounted the vessels in plexiglass pressure myograph chambers to measure myogenic tone in response to increasing pressure and targeted pharmacological treatments. We used an ETA receptor antagonist (BQ-123), an ETB receptor antagonist (BQ-788), endothelin-1, an endothelin-1 synthesis inhibitor (phosphoramidon), and vessel denudation to dissect the roles of each receptor in aging vasculature. Aged rats exhibited a higher myogenic tone than young rats, and the tone was sensitive to the ETA antagonist, BQ-123, but insensitive to the ETB antagonist, BQ-788. By contrast, the tone in the vessels from young rats was raised by BQ-788 but unaffected by BQ-123. When the endothelial layer that is normally enriched with ETB1 receptors was removed from young vessels, myogenic tone increased. However, denudation of the endothelial layer did not influence vessels from aged animals. This indicated that endothelial ETB1 receptors were not functional in the vessels from aged rats. There was also an increase in ETA receptor expression with age, whereas ETB receptor expression remained constant between young and aged animals. These results demonstrate that in young vessels, ETB1 receptors maintain a lower myogenic tone, but in aged vessels, a loss of ETB receptor activity allows ETA receptors in vascular smooth muscle cells to raise myogenic tone. Our findings have potentially important clinical implications for treatments to improve cerebral perfusion in older adults with diseases characterized by reduced cerebral blood flow.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Adel Zrein and Peter Nicholl for technical assistance.

Funding

This work was funded by a Heart and Stroke Foundation grant to SEH (grant number: G-19-002626), and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant (grant number: 05162-2014) to MEMK.

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MEMK, EMDW, and SEH designed the experiments. JZ and AMB performed the experiments. APY analyzed the data and made the figures. APY wrote the manuscript. All authors commented on and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Melanie E.M. Kelly.

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The animal protocols in this study conformed to the guidelines of the Canadian Council on Animal Care and were approved by the Dalhousie University Committee on Laboratory Animals.

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Young, A.P., Zhu, J., Bagher, A.M. et al. Endothelin B receptor dysfunction mediates elevated myogenic tone in cerebral arteries from aged male Fischer 344 rats. GeroScience 43, 1447–1463 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-020-00309-7

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