title: Long-term effects of psychoemotional stress and tread-mill exercise on the microcirculatory system of rats.
abstract: To answer the question of whether the increased intensity of tonic or of relaxing influences acting on the microcirculatory system predominate in various chronic psychoemotional stress situations and/or after long-lasting and intense tread-mill exercise, the left-ventricular wall of the heart and the skeletal muscle or pancreas of 49 experimental and 33 control animals were investigated, using a new histomorphometric method. Chronically stressed rats showed an increase of wall thickness in microvessels documenting a long-term increase of contractile performance of wall cells for the development and maintenance of an increased contractile tone; however, there were quantitative differences depending on the manner, intensity, and duration of stress. The opposite occurred in rats exercised by a tread-mill over 6 months, 3 h per day, demonstrating the morphological correlative of metabolic long-term autoregulation. An aversion stress applied simultaneously on these animals effectively antagonized the mentioned effects of exercise.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003331:Coronary Vessels / Q000502:physiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004597:Electroshock; D006352:Heart Ventricles / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008833:Microcirculation / Q000502:physiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D009200:Myocardial Contraction; D010179:Pancreas / Q000098:blood supply*; D005082:Physical Exertion; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016276:Ventricular Function