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(Circulation Research. 2005;97:e1.)
© 2005 American Heart Association, Inc.

Letters to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

Role of Kv1 Channels in Control of Arterial Myogenic Reactivity to Intraluminal Pressure

William C. Cole, Frances Plane, Rosalyn Johnson

The Smooth Muscle Research Group, University of Calgary, Canada

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

To the Editor:

The recent Letter to the Editor from Drs D.J. Beech, A. Cheong, and N.J. Rusch¹ regarding our article "Heteromultimeric Kv1 Channels Contribute to Myogenic Control of Arterial Diameter" in the February 4, 2005 issue of Circulation Research (Plane et al²) raises several important issues that we feel warrant clarification.

We wish to thank Beech and coauthors¹ for their interest in our work and especially for pointing out several errors in the literature citations in the article. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that these errors may have caused our readers.

We agree with the general statement advanced by Beech and coauthors¹ that our article "adds to an expanding body of evidence suggesting pivotal roles of the voltage-gated potassium channels in vascular smooth muscle cells as regulators of arterial tone" and that the role of these channels is an "emerging and important aspect of vascular biology". However, we strongly disagree with their contention that we erroneously claimed to have provided the first evidence that Kv1 channels play a role in controlling arterial myogenic reactivity to intraluminal pressure, the so-called "Bayliss effect," that is critical for appropriate regulation of blood pressure and organ-specific blood flow.

To demonstrate a role for Kv1 channels in the control of arterial myogenic reactivity, vessel diameter over a range of intraluminal pressures must be measured in the absence and presence of Kv1 channel inhibition. This is required to determine whether Kv1 channel inhibition causes a pressure-dependent increase in tone development, which would be . . . [Full Text of this Article]