Studies on the vasoconstrictor action of melatonin and putative melatonin receptor ligands in the tail artery of juvenile Wistar rats

摘要

We demonstrated that enhancement of electrically-evoked, isometric contractions of the rat isolated tail artery (using the Halpern-Mulvany wire myograph) is a simple and reproducible model for assessing the activity of putative agonists, partial agonists and antagonists at vascular melatonin receptors. Pharmacological characterization of the receptor suggests the presence of a MEL_1-like subtype.