Reductions in blood pressure after acute exercise by hypertensive rats

Postexercise reductions in blood pressure at rest have been reported for hypertensive subjects. To determine whether postexercise hypotension would occur in spontaneously hypertensive rats and to test the hypothesis that any reductions would result because of decreases in regional vascular resistances, hypertensive rats (n=19) were instrumented with indwelling arterial catheters and Doppler probes to measure regional blood flows from the iliac, superior mesenteric, and renal arteries. Data were collected from animals who performed a 20- and a 40-min treadmill test at between 60 and 70% of their maximum O₂ uptake. When the animals ran for 20 min, there was a pre- to postexercise drop in mean arterial pressure (MAP) from 158±3.6 to 150±3.6 mmHg (P<0.05) which was recorded 30 min after the exercise had ceased. The pre- to postexercise reduction in MAP after 40 min of treadmill running was from 154±3.1 to 138±3.0 mmHg (P<0.05) as recorded 30 min postexercise. Postexercise heart rate was significantly lower after the 40-min exercise bout, from a preexercise mean of 351±3 beats/min to 324±5 beats/min 30 min after the treadmill had stopped. Surprisingly, marked pre- to postexercise reductions in regional vascular resistance were not observed in either the iliac, superior mesenteric, or renal vascular beds. These data demonstrated the existence of postexercise hypotension in genetic hypertensive rats and suggested that reductions in cardiac output were the primary hemodynamic mechanism for this finding.