Plasma Clearance of dl-β-H3-Norepinephrine in Normal Human Subjects and Patients with Essential Hypertension*

Abstract

In 1936 hemodynamic measurements in patients with essential hypertension suggested the pres- ence of a functional increase in peripheral vaso- constriction producing an abnormally high periph- eral resistance to blood flow (1). The concept that physiologic degrees of vasoconstriction were main- tained by the adrenergic neurohumor, norepineph- rine (NE), was proposed almost simultaneously (2), but it was nearly 10 years later that von Euler (3, 4), Holtz, Credner, and Kroneberg ( Within a year, Goldenberg and co-work- ers (6) suggested that essential hypertension might be caused by the simple overproduction of NE. This neurohumoral theory underwent repeated evaluation, first by the measurement of NE in urine (7, 8) and plasma (9), and later by the assay in urine of the major NE catabolites, vanillylman- delic acid (VMA) (10), normetanephrine (NM) (11), and 3-methoxy, 4-hydroxyphenyl glycol (NMG) (12).