Abstract

Attempts were made to measure adenosine transport in isolated smooth muscle preparations including guinea-pig taenia caeci, beef coronary arteries and longitudinal muscle of rabbit small intestine. Because adenosine-mediated relaxation is potentiated by nucleoside transport inhibitors such as dipyridamole and 6- thiobenzylpurine ribosides in the first two systems but not in rabbit intestinal muscle, possible differences in transport capacities and in the effects of these inhibitors in the three tissues were examined. Transport was to be measured by assessing metabolic products of adenosine including adenine nucleotides and inosine plus hypoxanthine in both tissues and incubation media. Despite extensive rinsing of tissues, adenosine deaminase leaked into the incubation media, requiring its inhibition by 5 nM deoxycoformycin. When measuring apparent transport rates by quantitating metabolic products in the presence of 5 nM deoxycoformycin, no saturation of uptake at 100 to 400 microM adenosine was observed in taenia caeci and rabbit muscle. Comparing these results with literature reports on transport rates in single cell preparations, it appears that the obtained values (20-40 pmol/mg/min) may be at least 100-fold lower, suggesting that rates of diffusion through tissue and intracellular deamination of adenosine were the limiting functions measured by the methodology used in this study, requiring a careful definition for the terms transport and uptake and suggesting that it is practically not possible to measure true transport of adenosine in intact tissues. The uptake of adenosine was inhibited in all three tissues by dipyridamole and 6- thiobenzylpurine ribosides (10 microM) to a similar extent, leaving open the question of why potentiation of the relaxant effects of adenosine is seen in taenia caeci and coronary arteries but not in rabbit intestinal muscle.