Dose — Dependent Effects of Bradykinin Infusion in Postoperative Patients

The physiologoical role of locally liberated bradykinin from tissue kallikrein is still not known.The kallikrein-kinin system may be involved in many functions as vascular tone and blood pressure regulation,salivary secretion, resorption, diffusion and membrane permeability of elektrolytes, energy and substrate metabolism and inflammation (Fritz 1983). In former years mainly the vascular and inflammatory effects of bradykinin were studied with high BK-infusions in humans.In contrast,we observed metabolic effects already with very low BK-doses in diabetics and postoperative patients (Wicklmayr 1977,Jauch 1986),without cardiovascular side effects. Therefore we intended to study the BK-dose response relationship of different described alterations during BK-infusion in patients.