The Site and Mechanism of Oxygen Sensing for the Pulmonary Vessels

¹ From the Pulmonary Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

Lung vessels are unique in the body in that they react to hypoxia with constriction rather than dilatation. Whether this characteristic is inherent in the lung vessel or is due to an influence from a sensor in the surrounding lung parenchyma is not resolved. Recent data, however, showing that vascular hypoxia as well as airway hypoxia can produce pulmonary vasoconstriction and that the sensor for alveolar hypoxia is upstream in the precapillary vessels, allows but does not prove the precapillary pulmonary artery itself to be the O₂ sensor. In addition, with the elimination of the mast cell as a necessary extravascular sensor for hypoxia at least in the mouse, there is no good candidate for an extravascular sensor for hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction.