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Acute sympathetic vasoconstriction at rest and during dynamic exercise in cyclists and sedentary humans

Department of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California

Submitted 5 September 2006 ; accepted in final form 26 October 2006

The impact of exercise training on sympathetic activation is not well understood, especially across untrained and trained limbs in athletes. Therefore, in eight sedentary subjects (maximal oxygen consumption = 40 ± 2 ml·kg^–1·min^–1) and eight competitive cyclists (maximal oxygen consumption= 64 ± 2 ml·kg^–1·min^–1), we evaluated heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow, vascular conductance, and vascular resistance in the leg and arm during acute sympathetic stimulation [cold pressor test (CPT)]. The CPT was also performed during dynamic leg (knee extensor) or arm (handgrip) exercise at 50% of maximal work rate (WR_max) with measurements in the exercising limb. At rest, the CPT decreased vascular conductance similarly in the leg and arm of sedentary subjects (–33 ± 8% leg, –38 ± 6% arm) and cyclists (–34 ± 4% leg, –31 ± 9% arm), and during exercise CPT-induced vasoconstriction was blunted (i.e., sympatholysis) in both the leg and arm of both groups. However, the magnitude of sympatholysis was significantly different between the arm and leg of the sedentary group (–47 ± 11% arm, –25 ± 8% leg), and it was less in the arm of cyclists (–28 ± 11%) than sedentary controls. Taken together, these data provide evidence that sympathetically mediated vasoconstriction is expressed equally and globally at rest in both sedentary and trained individuals, with a differential pattern of vasoconstriction during acute exercise according to limb and exercise training status.

sympatholysis; limb specificity

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