Effect of acetylcholine on ventricular arrhythmias

Transmural electrophysiological heterogeneity, the T-wave and ventricular arrhythmias

“…The latter shortens APD in the ventricular myocardium (Martins and Zipes, 1980a;Taggart et al, 2003). Acetylcholine is the mediator of the vagal response and stimulates muscarinic receptors, which lowers cyclic AMP attenuating sympathetic effects (Basu, 1974;Opthof et al, 1993). Vagal stimulation itself does not affect refractoriness in ventricular myocardium of pig (Opthof et al, 1993) or APD in dog (Hoffman and Suckling, 1953) and cat (Kovacs and Bailey, 1985).…”