Sympathetic modulation of radial artery compliance in congestive heart failure

Animal studies have suggested that arterial compliance can be modulated by adrenergic influences. Whether this adrenergic modulation also occurs in humans is still a matter of debate. In the present article we address this issue by examining the relationships between sympathetic tone and arterial compliance in a variety of physiological and pathophysiological conditions. We have found that cigarette smoking, ie, an action that produces a marked sympathetic activation, causes a significant reduction in radial artery compliance, as measured by an echotracking device capable of providing continuous heat-to-heat evaluation of this hemodynamic variable. When expressed as compliance index, ie, as the ratio between the area under the compliance-pressure curve and pulse pressure, the reduction amounted to 35.7±4.8% (mean±SEM) and was independent of the smoking-related blood pressure increase. Furthermore, pharmacological stimulation of adrenergic receptors located in the arterial wall was also...