Breathing patterns in the awake potassium-depleted rat

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Rats fed a K-deficient diet have a reduced rate of body weight gain but have normal skeletal and lung growth and normal pulmonary mechanics when compared to age-matched normal-diet-fed controls (AMC). With correction of associated metabolic alkalosis, K-depleted rats compared to AMC animals breathe more deeply (P. < 0.05) and more slowly (P < 0.01), the slow frequency due to prolongation of the duration of inspiration (TI) and expiration (TE). Dietary controls indicate that the effect is K specific. With subsequent K depletion of animals that had undergone a chronic pulmonary vagotomy procedure (left pneumonectomy followed by right cervical vagotomy), development of the same alteration in the breathing pattern suggests that the vagus nerve is not a necessary component of the mechanism. Similarly, that tracheostomy does not eliminate the low-K effect indicates the upper airway and larynx are not necessary. The results, analyzed with use of the average spirogram, are interpreted to suggest an abnormality is present in the K-depleted rat affecting the means by which mean inspiratory and expiratory flow and inspiratory cutoff are regulated. Possible sources for this abnormality include altered metabolism, altered carotid body function and a direct CNS effect of K depletion.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: