“…The aortic smooth muscles of spontaneously hypertensive rats, however, have the active tone (Noon et al, 1978;Lindner and Heinle, 1987;Fitzpatrick and Szentivanyi, 1980 ;Sada et al, 1989 ;Sunano et al, 1992 ;Sasaki et al, 1993 ;Sunano et al, 1996). The active tone of these smooth muscles are sensitive to extracellular Ca2+ and abolished by the removal of Ca2+ from incuba tion medium or by the application of Ca antagonists Sada et al, 1989 ;Fitzpatrick and Szentivanyi, 1980 ;Lindner and Heinle, 1987 ;Noon et al, 1978).…”