Role of adenosine in ischemic preconditioning in rats depends critically on the duration of the stimulus and involves both A(1) and A(3) receptors.

Abstract

There is currently general agreement that adenosine is not involved in ischemic preconditioning (IP) in rat hearts. We hypothesized that the failure to show a role for adenosine is due to the use of brief preconditioning stimuli, and therefore investigated whether adenosine is involved when longer stimuli are employed and which receptor subtypes are involved.