The involvement of heating rate and vasoconstrictor nerves in the cutaneous vasodilator response to skin warming

Slow local skin heating (LH) causes vasodilator responses, some of which are dependent on sympathetic nerve function. It is not known, however, how the rate of LH affects either the sympathetic or the nonadrenergic components of the responses to LH and whether the adrenergic effects of LH depend on tonic sympathetic activity or whether LH stimulates transmitter release. In part 1, cutaneous vascular conductance (CVC) responses to slow and fast LH (+0.1° and +2°C/min) from 34° to 40°C were compared both at control sites and at sites pretreated with bretylium tosylate (BT; blocks transmitter release from adrenergic terminals). We confirmed, as previously found, the axon reflex (AR) response to slow LH to be blocked by BT ( P < 0.05). Pretreatment with BT reduced the AR only with fast LH. BT inhibited the peak vasodilation achieved with both rates of LH ( P < 0.05). Longer-term LH was associated with a slow fall in CVC, the classical “die away” phenomenon, at untreated sites ( P < 0.05) but not at BT-pretreated sites. Thus the LH-stimulated AR is only partially dependent on intact sympathetic function, and the “die away” phenomenon is dependent on such function. In part 2, we tested whether the conditions in part 1 (whole body and local skin temperatures of 34°C) completely suppressed sympathetic nerve activity. The infusion of BT by microdialysis did not change the CVC ( P > 0.05), suggesting the absence of tonic activity in those conditions and therefore that the adrenergic components of the responses in part 1 are via the stimulation of the transmitter release by LH.