The role of chemosensitive muscle receptors in cardiorespiratory regulation during exercise

Abstract

Several possible mechanisms leading to the cardiorespiratory adjustments to muscular exercise can be considered. Activation of the cardiovascular and respiratory centers may result from: (1) direct or reflex action of circulating metabolites (humoral control); (2) cortical influxes (central drive); (3) nervous impulses from receptors in the contracting muscles (peripheral drive). Information presently available focuses most of the interest upon the muscular drive. Our studies on anesthetized animals (rabbits, dogs) have demonstrated that different types of exercise (dynamic and static) produce two different types of adjustments reflexly elicited by activation of sensory endings of somatic afferents in muscles. Dynamic exercise produces a vasodilatory effect with a decrease in blood pressure and heart rate and an increase in breathing frequency; static exercise provokes an increase in blood pressure, heart rate and depth of breathing. These two patterns of adjustments to exercise are also reproducible, in anesthetized animals, by injecting chemical substances into muscular arteries. Injections of bradykinin, K+ ions and acid solutions evoke cardiorespiratory responses analogous to those produced by dynamic contractions; injections of hypertonic NaCl or glucose evoke an excitatory pattern closely similar to that elicited by isometric contractions. These research studies lead to the hypothesis that two functionally distinct types of chemosensitive receptors (K and P) exist in the skeletal muscles which are activated in proportionally different measures during different types of muscular activity, thus evoking coordinated changes in the cardiovascular and respiratory functions. These studies also strongly support the important role of the peripheral reflex mechanism in governing the circulatory and respiratory systems to perfectly match cardiorespiratory changes to the muscular metabolic needs during exercise.