Failure to Produce Blood Pressure Changes Following Pharmacological or Surgical Depletion of Brain Serotonin in the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat

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Abstract
Spontaneously hypertensive (SH) and normotensive (Wistar-Kyoto, WKY) rats were examined for blood pressure changes following depletion of CNS serotonin (5-HT) by 3 separate techniques: p-chlorophenylalanine, 5,7-dihydroxydrytamine (5,7-DHT) and a lesion of the dorsal and median raphe nuclei. All of these procedures failed to alter blood pressure in either hypertensive or normotensive rats, despite marked reductions (75-85%) in forebrain 5-HT. Treatment of 10 day-old hypertensive rat pups with intracisternal injections of 5,7-DHT (10 .mu.g) failed to alter the development of hypertension despite a 75-80% decrease in spinal cord 5-HT. These findings, which show that 5-HT depletion does not alter blood pressure in the SH or the WKY rat, do not support the idea that 5-HT is involved in the regulation of blood pressure or in the development and maintenance of hypertension in the SH rat.